The Swiss government is set to return $380 million kept by former head of state, Gen Sani Abacha, and confiscated by the Geneva authorities to Nigeria.
According to reports from the Geneva public prosecutor’s office yesterday, the move came after the Nigerian government and the Abacha family reached a deal.
“Nigeria has long been chasing funds taken by the Abacha clan while Sani Abacha was in power from 1994-1998.Overall, the Abacha clan is thought to have diverted a total of about $5 billion (CHF5 billion) from the Nigerian treasury. Much of it ended up abroad”, the report said.
The $380 million in question was seized in Luxembourg in 2006 on the orders of Geneva justice authorities.
The repatriation and confiscation of the Geneva funds followed the conclusion of an agreement in July 2014 between Nigeria and the Abacha family.
This set out the confiscation of the assets and their return to Nigeria, as well as Abuja dropping its complaint against Abba Abacha, the son of the former dictator.
According to a statement from the prosecutor’s office, the confiscation order allows, among other things, that the funds returned to Nigeria are monitored by the World Bank. If the monitoring is not effective, the funds will be returned to the authorities in Geneva.
The statement also said that the file against Abba Abacha was now closed based on an article in the penal code which allowed criminal proceedings to be abandoned once the defendant had made amends as much as was possible.
In 2012, after a legal back and forth, the Geneva Police Court gave Abba Abacha a one-year suspended prison sentence for belonging to a criminal organisation. Abba Abacha was absent from the court room.
The Federal Court in Lausanne, Switzerland’s highest instance, quashed the sentence in May 2014.
At the time of filing this report, efforts to reach the Swiss Embassy in Abuja for further confirmation were futile as calls put through were not answered and neither were the emails sent replied.
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