Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) has announced that it has recovered more than $23 million stolen from Nigeria by the country’s late military dictator Sani Abacha.
NCA, in a statement on Thursday, May 5, 2022, said the funds were retrieved as part of a wider pool of funds identified by the United States Department of Justice (USDOJ) as having been stolen out of Nigeria in the 1990s by Mr Abacha and his accomplices.
According to the statement posted on the U.K.’s crime agency website, the funds were recovered after seven years of litigation and international negotiation pursued by the NCA, at the request of the DOJ.
It said the funds have now been transferred to the Home Office of the UK for onward transmission to the USDOJ.
Billy Beattie, Asset Denial Senior Manager at the NCA said, “The NCA is committed to ensuring that the UK is not a safe haven for crimin@ls to launder their proceeds of crime, and civil recovery of assets is a powerful weapon in this fi#ht.”
Abacha ruled Nigeria from 1993 until his de@th in 1998, a period during which he stole up to $5 billion of public money, according to Transparency International. He was never charged.
