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STEALING IN ADVANCE: POLITICIANS DECLARE ASSETS THEY HAVE NOT YET ACQUIRED – EFCC
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has stated that politicians have devised a new means to perpetuate corruption and evade anti-graft agencies by declaring assets they are yet to acquire before assuming office.
Speaking during the launch of Virtual Tool on the Code of Conduct for Public Officers on Tueday in Abuja, the Chairman of the EFFC, Ola Olukoyede, said this is a case of anticipatory looting of government funds by government appointees.
The event was organised by the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) and Technical Unit on Governance and Anti-Corruption Reforms (TUGAR).
Olukoyede said during investigation, it was observed the person of interest used a different house number when filing his declaration form which was not the same with the real one with the view of building while in office.
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“There was an investigation we carried out, and we discovered something not too strange, but proves the ingenuity and the criminally smart way that some of our politically exposed persons carried out some of the nefarious activities we investigated them for.
“There was a matter we investigated. I told my guys, just get the CCB form and look at it. There’s something I’m not comfortable with in this report. So they got the CCB form. We looked at it. We discovered one of the very big properties valued well over N3bn the person declared in the CCB form. We saw that the address that was in the CCB form was different from the one that the person put down, from the particular address where that particular property was located. So I felt something was amiss.”
“So, we decided to dig further, carried out more interrogation, and we discovered that actually the person declared the property where the property was not in existence. After the person won an election, I won’t mention, but you should be able to decipher, before he was sworn in, he got the asset declaration form and put a particular number: No 39, so and so Street, a big mansion owned by him, bequeathed to him by whatever. And by the time we investigated, we discovered the asset was on number 44.
“He declared 39, but the asset is actually the buildings on number 44. So while we were asking questions, eventually we discovered what we call anticipatory declaration of assets. And that is the smart way that some of these leaders have resorted to now.
“Now, they declare what they intend to acquire by the time they are in the office before they are sworn in to the office. It is terrible. We saw that and we felt, no, this is pretty bad.
“Unfortunately, for him, he was so devilishly smart that he had already registered the property that he did own at the time he declared it in the land registry. He designed the mansion that he wanted to build there. So in other words, before he was sworn in, he had started thinking about the money to steal and what to do with the money.
“So, he designed the mansion that he actually wants to acquire by the time he gets to the office. So we felt this is a bit odd and we should begin to look into this.”
He urged the CCB to be watchful of such declarations by politicians.
Earlier, the Head of Service of the Federation, Didi Esther Walson-Jack, said the tool was launched to promote ethical standards in the civil service and curb corruption.
