The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has denied the commission shared 222 pensions properties recovered by the Abdul-Rasheed Maina’s Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms committee as alleged by the Senate.
The Senate had instituted a probe into the purported looting and sale of recovered pension assets at below market value to officials and cronies of the federal government.
The assets include 222 properties comprising residential and commercial properties in several parts of Nigeria, an unstated number of luxury vehicles and portfolio investments, which were recovered by the Abdulrasheed Maina-led Presidential Task Team on Pension Reforms and handed over to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
Owing to the new information available to the Senate, it expanded the scope of its ad hoc committee charged with investigating the circumstances of the return and reinstatement of Maina into the civil service to include the looting and disposal of pension assets.
The new mandate to the committee followed a point of order raised by its chairman, Senator Emmanuel Paulker who said the investigation of government officials suspected to have been involved in Maina’s reinstatement into the public sector, had revealed that the assets had been disposed of.
Paulker, therefore, sought the leave of the Senate to mandate the committee to unravel the identities of the beneficiaries of the looting and acquisitions.
In his presentation yesterday on the findings of his committee, Paulker had said: “The Senate should note that before Maina left, the Pension Reform Task Team had recovered assets from alleged pension looters, working with the EFCC, ICPC, DSS, police and paramilitary agencies who executed the recoveries and thereafter, EFCC took over custody of the recovered assets.
“The Senate should equally note that the EFCC, as a member of the Maina-led Pension Tax Force Team, had the statutory powers to impound and take custody of the assets.
“The Senate is alarmed that the total recovered assets from the alleged pension thieves were reported to have been shared by some interest groups.
“The Senate further notes that this revelation emerged during the current investigation by the ad hoc committee on the reinstatement of Maina and the committee equally received a petition on the recovered properties by the task force.
“For this alarming revelation, sir, this committee requests the Senate to expand the scope of its investigation on Maina by extending it to the management of assets recovered by him and handed over to EFCC before his removal as Chairman, Presidential Task Force on Pensions in 2014 and by so doing, extend the duration of the assignment.”
The request of the committee was overwhelmingly voted for by the senators.
Presiding, Senate President Bukola Saraki charged the committee to do a thorough job and unravel the allegations.
“This is a very serious matter and more of large-scale corruption going on in forbidden places. We just hope that it remains in the realm of allegations and not as it is presented,” he said.
The committee is expected to submit its report in four weeks.
But in a swift reaction, the EFCC, in a statement issued by Wilson Uwujaren, Head, Media & Publicity said the attention of the commission had been drawn to comments attributed to the Chairman of the Senate Ad Hoc Committee investigating the controversial reinstatement of Abdulrasheed Maina, Senator Emmanuel Paulker, alleging that officials of the Commission shared 222 properties which Maina’s Panel seized from pension fund thieves.
“This sweeping allegation, coming from a Senate Committee is disturbing more so as no attempt was made to verify the information from the Commission. The EFCC was never invited by the Committee and given the opportunity to educate it on the status of assets seized from suspected pension thieves, yet the Committee was comfortable to scandalize the EFCC with the public disclosure of unverified claims by unknown interests.
“For the avoidance of doubt, there are no 222 properties anywhere that was shared by anybody. The EFCC did not receive a single property from Abdulrasheed Maina. All the pension fraud assets that are in the recovered assets inventory of the Commission were products of independent investigation by the EFCC, for which Maina and his cohorts had no clues. If Maina or any government official witnessed the sharing of any recovered pension assets by any official of the EFCC, they should be willing to name the official, the assets involved; when and where the ‘sharing’ took place.
“As far as the EFCC is concerned, there is no controversy regarding the status of assets recovered from suspected pension thieves. The record of all the recovered assets from both the Police Pension and the Pension Office of the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation as well as their current status are intact, and have been communicated to the relevant organs of government.”
The EFCC said in view of the consistent display of public ignorance about the profile of recovered assets by even those who should know, it was important to state that it was impossible for anybody to share a property that was subject of interim forfeiture by the court.
“Of all the properties seized from pension fraud suspects, it is only properties that are linked to John Yusuf, who was convicted under a plea bargain arrangement that had been forfeited permanently and handed to government. All the others, with the exception of Brifina Hotel, are subject to interim forfeiture. And the cases are ongoing in courts,” it stated.