The Presidential Advisory Committee against Corruption has demanded unconditional return of assets and funds looted from Nigeria into foreign countries.
The Executive Secretary of the Committee, Prof. Bolaji Owosanoye, made the demand in New York at a workshop on ‘Illicit Financial Flows and Assets Recovery’ on Monday.
The Correspondent of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the workshop was jointly organised by the Permanent Missions of Nigeria and Norway to the UN.
The presidential aide regretted the difficult conditions and processes Nigeria and other victim countries were going through to effect the repatriation of their assets.
Owosanoye said: “Unconditional return of assets must be equal priority with transparent management of returned assets towards meeting Sustainable Development Goals.
“Part of the tension point right now is that returning assets is fraught with such conditions that make receiving and victims’ states very uncomfortable and a violation of sovereignty basically”.
“Returnable assets should cover as far as we are concerned, all forms of illicit financial flows including publicly looted funds, fines, compensations, disgorged profits, diverted tax, shifted profits.
“One of the big problems is that big corporations purport to incorporate and be citizens of tax haven. You’ve done a business in a big economy like Nigeria on the books.
“However, you then shift all of the profits as having being realized in a small country like Mauritius or Seychelles or British Virgin Islands.
“Which clearly don’t have the market for the kind of turnover that you’re disclosing in your books; It’s unfair. So we need to jointly criminalize all of these”.
He said there was the need to improve the mutual legal assistance processes to shorten the response time to frustrate the dissipation of assets between victims and receiving states.
According to him, victim countries also need to be advised to combine civil forfeiture measures including civil criminal proceedings to enhance their chances of recovery.
In his remarks, the Charge D’Affaires, Permanent Missions of Nigeria to the UN, Anthony Bosah, said developing and emerging economies lost 6.6 trillion dollars in illicit financial flows from 2003 to 2012.
According to him, addressing the twin issues of illicit financial flows and assets recovery is critical to our collective aspiration to harness all sources of finance for sustainable development.
“Specifically, these resources would have supported infrastructure and socio-economic growth and development in many countries.
“Nigeria sees these developments as endemic and which require collective action by the United Nations to address.
“There is no doubt that if this situation is allowed to persist, a continent like Africa will remain at the pedestrian of global economy.
Bosah called for the global community to promote international cooperation towards strengthening the mechanisms to dismantle safe havens for the proceeds of corruption and ensure the recovery and return of stolen assets to their counties of origin.
“We collaborated with like-minded countries to facilitate the adoption of the Resolution on the “Promotion of International Cooperation to Combat Illicit Financial Flows to foster sustainable development” at the 71st General Assembly.
“At the national level, President Muhammadu Buhari is taking steps to plug loopholes and institute enforceable measures that should address the challenge of illicit transfer of funds.
“This includes disclosure of sources of such transfers, this effort is yielding tremendous results already,” he said.
Bosah assured of Nigeria’s readiness to continue to work with other Permanent Mission of to the UN to sustain the momentum that the subject had generated within the global community.
The workshop was attended by the Permanent Representative of Norway to the UN, Amb. Geir Pedersen, and those of Canada, Jamaica, Senegal, Algeria and Libya.
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