EFCC seizes N14.6b jewellery, houses worth $80m from Diezani

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has seized jewellery worth N14 billion from former Minister of Petroleum, Diezani Allison-Madueke.

The EFCC Chairman, Abdulrasheed Bawa, made this known before the House of Representatives ad hoc committee investigating the assessment and status of recovered loot on Friday in Abuja.

Bawa also said the commission had seized houses worth $80 million from the former Minister.

The anti-graft commission chairman said that Alison-Madueke’s jewellery are still in the custody of the agency, and that they have not been auctioned but have been finally forfeited to the federal government.

He said that court processes, procedures and administrative exigencies had stalled some of the seized assets from being auctioned by the commission.

Bawa, however, said that the agency would henceforth deal with the seized assets case by case at the courts in order to quickly dispose of the assets.

“Already the federal government has set up a committee under the chairmanship of the Solicitor-General for the Federation and I think they are working tirelessly,” he said.

This, according to him, is to ensure that assets that are not only recovered by the EFCC but disposed of.

“We have EFCC representatives from that committee and we believe at the end of the day, Nigerians are going to appreciate what that committee will come out with in terms of the mandate given to them,” he said.

Asked when the committee would wind up so the assets could be disposed of, Bawa said that he was not a member of the committee to know how soon the assets were going to be disposed.

Bawa said that in his quest to transform the agency, he would soon digitalise its processes, adding that he had also created and upgraded four additional departments to restore confidence.

He listed the departments to include: Intelligence, Procurement, Internal Affairs and the Information Communication Technology.

He said that there was no loot that had been re-looted as being speculated, stressing that going forward, the EFCC would be different and Nigerians would be the better for it.