The Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, SAN has assured agencies charged with responsibilities of recovering looted Nigerian funds that the reason for putting a regulation was not to take away their duty from them but as a measure to regulate their activities.
This come amidst preparation by the Minister of Justice and the Island of Jersey are set to sign an agreement with the United State Government to repatriate 321 million dollars looted by former Head of State, Gen. Sani Abacha.
The Minister disclosed this through his spokesperson, Umar Gwandu, who said, his boss made this clarification on Thursday during the Heads of Agencies sensitization on the implementation of the 2017 – 2021 National Anti-corruption Strategy (NACS).
He explained that, the issuance of the Asset Tracing, Recovery and Management Regulation 2019, released on the 29th October 2019 was targeted on consolidating the overall effort, attaining synergy and encouraging record centralisation.
In his statement, “I wish to use this medium to reassure particularly our Law Enforcement Agencies that are directly involved with asset recovery that the essence of the Regulation is in no way intended to take away the statutory powers of any agencies but rather to consolidate these powers by encouraging synergy and also centralize records of proceeds of crime and ensure transparent disposal and management of assets in line with the vision of the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari GCFR,”
According to him, the purpose of the meeting was to solicit cooperation and collaboration of the pilot MDAs in the implementation of NACS which the Minister believes is going forward and within the lifespan of the strategy is more than enough to collaborate and make unprecedented progress in its implementation.
The minister explained that four cardinal measures were put in place including keeping the agencies abreast of the Regulation through making the agencies have access to input inventories of all assets recovered and their current status.
He added the agencies need to be taught the Standard Operational Procedures (SOPs) as a guide for the disposal and Management of asset with each agency, subsequently, the process will be made transparent and open with collective input designed to establish a database which will serve as the backup to the institution.