From Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Abdulrasheed Bawa, has said the commission is waiting for a presidential committee to undertake the auction of jewellery and houses seized from former Minister of Petroleum, Diezani Allison-Madueke.
Bawa, stated this, when he appeared before the House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee probing the status of recovered loot, movable and immovable assets from 2002 to 2020, yesterday, in Abuja. The EFCC boss, who was reacting to the panel’s query on the delay in the auctioning of property confiscated from Allison-Madueke, said all the seized items are in the custody of the anti-graft agency.
According to him, although the EFCC obtained a final forfeiture order on the jewellery valued at N14,460,000, 000 and houses valued at $80million, it could not proceed with the auction, because of “a lot of events.” Bawa said: “The forfeited items are in our custody. It has not being auctioned yet. They have been finally forfeited- houses, vehicles etc. And the commission is looking forward to the presidential committee to auction all those items and then deposit the money, appropriately.
“We got the forfeiture order in 2019. Al ot of events hindered us from proceeding with that. We couldn’t move on to some of these things, because of certain things that happened. But now that the Federal Government has set up the committee, we are praying that it will come to end very soon.