Following a bitter war of words between the whistleblower who exposed corruption and helped with the recovery of about N13bn and the EFCC who claimed he had gone insane, Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun has stepped in to calm things down.
The bone of contention is the payment of the percentage of the money recovered which is supposed to be paid to the informant, an amount which has so far been unpaid. Things got worse when acting head of the EFCC, Ibrahim Magu purportedly said that the Whistleblower was now a millionaire, a claim which seemed to indicate that the whistleblower had been paid even though he had not.
In a statement by Mrs. Adeosun, she said that the payment would be made this month.
“The attention of the Honourable Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, has been drawn to media reports surrounding the payment to a whistleblower, who provided the tips that led to the recovery of funds stashed away in a property in Ikoyi, Lagos State.
The Honourable Minister wishes to state unequivocally that the Federal Government has not withheld any fund due to any whistleblower.
The ministry has in place detailed procedures for processing payments due under the whistleblower policy.
The procedures were designed to prevent abuse and legal disputes and to ensure protection of the information providers.
These procedures include an application by the agency who recovered the funds including evidence of the recovery, confirmation that there are no pending legal issues on the recovery, verification of the identity of the information provider, calculation of the amount payable and computation of relevant taxes.
It must be stated also that payments are made in monthly batches to ensure control and to protect the identity of information providers.
To date, over 20 of such persons have been paid. From available records, the payment due on Ikoyi is among those being processed in the November batch, which will be released within the current month.”