Ibori’s Conviction Costs £14m – Senate

Senator Victor Lar, chairman of the Senate Committee on Drugs, Narcotics, and Financial Crimes and anti-corruption, said on Friday that a whopping £14m (N400bn) was spent to secure the conviction of former Governor James Ibori, in the United Kingdom on April 17, 2012.

Lar, who made the revelation when federal government agencies under the supervision of his committee defended their 2015 budget in the senate, however said the case was at no cost to the Nigerian anti-graft agencies.

The senator stressed the need to amend the enabling laws of the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, and the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, so that they could be receiving their funds directly.

Lar said, “All the convictions were secured with very limited or no funds. People are quick to celebrate the conviction of James Ibori in the U.K.

The truth is that to secure Ibori’s conviction, a whooping sum of £14m was expended.

“That is almost N400bn which is more than 10 years recurrent and capital budgets of all the anti-corruption agents put together.”

Lar added that other countries were able to prosecute financial crimes successfully because a percentage of funds recovered or the proceeds of crime was usually retained by the recovering agency for funding their activities.

He noted that most Nigerians are impatient and believe that politically exposed persons are corrupt and should be convicted.

He, however said, “The truth is that we observe the rule of law and once you are accused and taken to court you have to go through court processes.”

He said, “Once you are arrested and taken to court, it is outside the control of the enforcement agencies. So it is not entirely the fault of the enforcement agencies that there is corruption in the country.

“This administration has fought corruption more than any other time because we have more petitions, more people are taken to court and we have more convictions now more than ever before.”

In 2012, for instance, Lar said the EFCC secured about 87 convictions, 116 in 2013 and 136 in 2014.

Heads of the anti-corruption agencies while making their presentation, lamented their poor funding and urged the National Assembly to expedite action on its move to amend the enabling laws that established them in order to get more funds.