The Assistant Director-General and Head Global Cooperation Department, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Amb. Pio Wennubst says Switzerland has returned all the money kept in the country by late Nigeria’s Head of State Gen. Sani Abacha, with 1.5 million dollars interest.
Amb. Pio Wennubst stated this on Monday in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria correspondents in Abuja. He explained that Switzerland returned about 322.5 million dollars (N116.11 billion) to the Federal Government, although the original figure was 321 million dollars. The Swiss envoy added that the money was returned to the Nigerian Government unconditionally.
According to him;
“We returned 321 million dollars including the interests. We return all the amount, 322.5 million dollars including the interest for the time that the funds were blocked.
We are not talking about the condition; there was a programme on the social safety net that was developed by the Government of Nigeria and the Bank. After discussing, the only condition, set by the judiciary, not by us, was that the return of this asset should have been monitored by the World Bank and this is where we worked on’’.
Meanwhile, the Special Adviser to the Minister of Finance on Media and Publicity, Oluyinka Akintunde, had confirmed the receipt of money from Switzerland.
“We state that $322,515,931.83 (N116,105,735,458.80) was received into a Special Account in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Dec. 18, 2017, from the Swiss government’’
