A leading Nigerian rights group is urging the U.S. government to give nearly half a billion dollars in assets frozen from a corrupt dictator to charities instead of the Nigerian government.
That would help see the money is used to improve the lives of the people from whom it was stolen and could help unblock billions more banked by deceased Gen. Sani Abacha and held by countries reluctant to return it, said the group.
“There is a strong probability that the money will be re-stolen” if the frozen funds are returned to the Nigerian government, Adetokunbo Mumuni, executive director of the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project told The Associated Press on Thursday. Delays perpetuate the corruption, he said, “Otherwise what we have is a vicious cycle of corruption, poverty and of course impunity of perpetrators.”
U.S. lawyers for his organization on Wednesday asked the U.S. attorney general to publish a proposal to dispose of more than $458 million in assets frozen by the U.S. Justice Department last month as corrupt proceeds in the name of Abacha, a son who is a Nigerian politician and an associate who is now a federal senator.
The petition suggests the Department of Justice consider the integrity of the Nigerian government and its anti-corruption safeguards and asks “under what circumstances the department would prefer to repatriate such funds to a charitable organization for public benefit purposes, e.g. health care, in the victim country.”
It suggests giving the money to Nigerian charities or U.S. charities working in this country.
Repatriation of frozen assets is not automatic, said one of the rights project’s pro-bono lawyers, Alexander W. Sierck of Washington D.C.-based Cameron LLP. “The U.S. Department of Justice has substantial discretion here, both as to whether to repatriate and to whom,” he told the AP in an email.
Nigerian and foreign human rights organizations charge that some of the $505.5 million dollars repatriated from Swiss banks holding Abacha’s funds already have been misused.
“Almost half of the money that was sent out disappeared once again,” said Olivier Longchamp of Switzerland’s Berne Declaration advocacy group. He said not all the money was necessarily stolen, but it could not be tracked.
The Berne Declaration in November published a report accusing two Swiss commodity traders and the state-controlled Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. of defrauding Nigeria’s government of some $6.8 billion from oil sales between 2009 and 2011.
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