Again, funds worth $23.4m looted by Abacha recovered in UK

Funds worth $23,439,724.98 stolen and laundered out of Nigeria to the United Kingdom in the 1990s by the associates and family of former Head of State, General Sani Abacha, have been recovered.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) in the UK said in a communique on Thursday that the funds formed part of a larger pool of monies identified by the United States Department of Justice (USDOJ) as having been misappropriated by Abacha and his allies.

The NCA said that the funds had been transferred to the Home Office for onward transmission to the USDOJ.

Asset Denial, Senior Manager at the NCA, Billy Beattie assured that “the NCA is committed to ensuring that the UK is not a safe haven for criminals to launder their proceeds of crime, and the civil recovery of assets is a powerful weapon in this fight.”

Beattie further said, “We work closely with the UK and international partners to tackle the threat posed by corruption, which disproportionately impacts the poorest and most vulnerable members of society.

“We are committed to ensuring that those who perpetrate corruption do not benefit from their actions.”

Abacha died in 1998, but since his death over 20 years ago, the Nigerian government has continued to recover monies he and his family members were believed to have laundered out to foreign countries, chiefly in Switzerland, Jersey Island in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Liechtenstein.