4
International campaign for the recovery of looted assets
p. 60-75
Texte intégral
Introduction
Political leaders in this part of the world (Nigeria) are encouraged in part to be brazenly corrupt because they have safe havens to store their ill-gotten wealth outside the country. And as long as these havens exist, domestic wars on corruption are unlikely to go far. But if the havens are made unsafe, the incentive to steal will be greatly reduced. (ThisDay, 12 April 2005)
1One of the main features of corruption in Africa in general, and Nigeria in particular, is the regular transfer of looted public funds to overseas bank accounts (United Nations 2002). Indeed, much of the estimated $350 to $400 billion siphoned off by Nigeria’s political class is said to be sitting in foreign, mainly Western, financial institutions.1 The transfer of looted public assets is not a phenomenon unique to African countries. For a long time, corrupt leaders in many Third World countries (Joseph Mobutu of Zaire, Ferdinand Marcos of Philippines, Alberto Fujimori of Peru, and Augusto Pinochet of Chile are good examples) saw Western financial institutions as ‘safe havens’ to hide their loot (Transparency International 2004: 32). This was not without good reason. Unlike their own local institutions, which were easily susceptible to investigation once their government was overthrown, Western institutions, famous for bank secrecy rules and protection by their home governments, proved more reliable. This reason held particular attraction for African leaders, fleeing the double menace of a chronically unstable political and economic environment, characterised by frequent changes in government, and galloping inflation and depreciation of national currencies (Sindzingre 1997). As African economic crises intensified in the 1990s, attention shifted to how some of the billions stashed away in foreign lands could be returned to help grow national economies. Effective asset recovery, it was reasoned, would not only assist these poor countries redress the worst effects of corruption; it would also help send a strong message to corrupt officials that there would be no place to hide their illicit assets (Brinkerhoff 1999).
2The third aspect of Obasanjo’s anti-corruption campaign, therefore, was premised on recovering Nigeria’s billions stashed away in foreign banks. The campaign involved a frantic international effort aimed at identifying the hundreds of bank accounts and assets (landed property, companies, shares, etc.) held illegally abroad by corrupt Nigerian officials and then efforts aimed at ensuring that they were duly confiscated and the proceeds repatriated to the country. A second part of this campaign involved persuading the governments whose financial institutions are at the centre of this fraud, and indeed the entire international community, to initiate reforms leading to the adoption of new legislation and treaties to criminalise the fraud and prevent the international financial system from being used to launder stolen funds from poor countries such as Nigeria. These policies were clearly unprecedented in Nigeria,2 where pursuit of looted funds had largely been localised inside the country. As a consequence, they raised a number of questions. Did the Obasanjo government possess the necessary political will to see this policy through? Where would Nigeria get the technical expertise needed to uncover hundreds, if not thousands, of secret bank accounts owned by corrupt Nigerian officials abroad? Would the foreign financial institutions and their governments be willing to cooperate with Nigeria in its search for funds hidden in their vaults?
3As the experiences of a number of other countries who have engaged in similar battles clearly showed, recovering stolen assets from abroad is a Herculean task, requiring not only political will, a reliable legal system, technical know-how, and familiarity with the exigencies of countries holding the assets (‘requested states’) by those seeking to recover their assets (‘requesting states’) (U4 online (undated)), but also the financial and diplomatic muscle to overcome the administrative bottlenecks and political manoeuvres usually created by states who receive stolen assets (Turner 2004: 4). Undeterred by these difficulties, the Obasanjo government plunged into the fight, which soon transformed into one of its major foreign policy priorities. Subsequently, the struggle was boosted by several initiatives taken by the international community, aimed at depriving corrupt officials around the world of the opportunity of using the international financial system to hide their ill-gotten wealth (Daniel 2004). In this chapter, we will look at how this campaign was elaborated and prosecuted, beginning first as a purely Nigerian struggle before later turning into a major international preoccupation.
Nigerian initiatives to recover looted assets from abroad
4Although widely associated with the Obasanjo administration, the prevention of transfer of public assets and their recovery had long been a standing challenge for Nigerians before the inauguration of the Fourth Republic in May 1999. For instance, the problem was so important in the 1970s that the framers of the 1979 Constitution had cause to include a clause prohibiting the ownership of foreign accounts by top public officials, who had to close any foreign accounts before assuming office (Federal Republic of Nigeria 1979). All public officials were also required to declare their assets, and those of their spouses and children, every four years. However, like most other anti-corruption laws, these provisions, which found their way into all successive constitutions, were more often observed in the breach, so that by 1999 much of Nigeria’s wealth was said to have found its way into the foreign bank accounts of a few powerful individuals. The scale of the problem was brought into sharp focus by the sordid revelations that followed the unexpected demise of General Sani Abacha in June 1998.
The demise of Abacha: The beginning of the search for looted funds
5Investigations into what came to be known as ‘Abacha’s loot’ began almost immediately after his death in June 1998,3 when a Special Investigation Panel (SIP) was inaugurated by his immediate successor, General Abdusalami Abubakar. According to media reports, the investigations were provoked by the interception of Abacha’s widow, Mariam Abacha, at the Kano Airport, allegedly in possession of 38 suitcases stuffed with hard currency and on her way to Saudi Arabia (Newsweek, 13 March 2000: 16). During a press conference on 6 September 1998, General Abubakar announced that investigators had uncovered at least 130 bank accounts in 50 different banks (foreign and local) in which millions of dollars stolen from the Nigerian public treasury were stashed (see Table 4.1 for details). The General also confirmed that in a bid to recover the funds, his government had requested the cooperation of the countries where the funds were kept (The News, 31 May 1999).
Table 4.1. Details of withdrawals effected at the Central Bank of Nigeria
Date of withdrawal | Amount withdrawn |
15 February 1995 07 February 1995 08 July 1995 29 December 1995 28 March 1996 29 May 1996 20 June 1996 20 August 1996 24 September1996 30 September 1996 14 October 1996 11 November 1996 18 February 1997 28 February 1997 3 March 1997 6 March 1997 22 April 1997 28 April 1997 30 June 1997 9 July 1997 8 August 1997 18 October 1997 21 October 1997 23 October 1997 29 October 1997 14 November 1997 26 November 1997 10 December 1997 18 December 1997 | $4 million and £2 million $4 million and £2 million $5 million and £4 million $5 million $3.8 million $12.5 million $10 million and £5 million $30 million and £15 million $50 million $50 million and £3 million $5 million $5 million and £3 million $6 million $3 million $3.27 million $1.21 million $60 million $60 million and £30 million $4.9 million $5 million and £2 million $10 million $12.3 million £5.88 million £14.76 million £11.76 million $10 million $24 million $24 million £6.15 million |
Source: Ugolor 2002.
6By the time he left office in May 1999, General Abubakar had recovered $825 million from the Abacha family, leaving a total of $1.3 billion frozen in several banks in Switzerland, Luxemburg, and Liechtenstein (Daniel 2004: 102). According to the military government, most of the money recovered came from assets (buildings, lands, stocks and shares, vehicles, companies, etc.) and bank accounts of the late dictator and a few collaborators, which were held within Nigeria and had been returned ‘voluntarily’ by the family of the late Abacha and their close allies. Most of these funds were withdrawn directly from the vaults of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) between 1994 and 1997 (Ugolor 2002). According to data released, Abacha and some members of his ‘kitchen cabinet’ may have grabbed at least $2 billion from the CBN (see Table 4.1). The monies were often loaded into CBN bullet-proof vans and delivered directly to Abacha and his cronies (Newsweek, 13 March 2000).
7Despite the fact that most of the looted funds were kept overseas, the Abubakar administration placed the emphasis on recovering what was held within Nigeria. The reason for this decision was obvious. The regime was faced with a number of political constraints: The resolution of the political crisis provoked by the annulment of the 12 June 1993 presidential elections; restoration of national unity sapped by the five years of tyranny under Abacha; successful and speedy completion of a democratic transition programme; rehabilitation of Nigeria into the international community after years of international isolation; and of course, lack of time – Abubakar’s regime was in power for only one year. Thus, even if we assume that the regime had the required political will and competencies for a more extensive search – which is debatable – the scope of the domestic task before it would have made such an effort impossible.
The arrival of the Obasanjo administration: From domestic constraints to external challenge
8The arrival of the Obasanjo government was accompanied by a dramatic change in the campaign to recover Nigeria’s stolen assets, from a more local-based initiative to an international campaign, with Western governments and other financial centres where stolen funds were believed to be held coming under increasing pressure. As soon as he assumed office, President Obasanjo wrote to all heads of states and governments concerned, including the leaders of the G7, requesting their support in the recovery of Nigerian assets stashed abroad in general, and in their countries in particular. According to Nigerian officials, this request received favourable responses. The Nigerian government’s claim that the responses of these leaders were positive4 was confirmed by initial progress in the recovery of looted assets, as the amount frozen in foreign accounts rose from $1.3 billion to $1.93 billion within one year. Similarly, according to figures published by the Ministry of Finance, out of a total of $6 billion allegedly stolen by Abacha, $3 billion had been identified and almost $2 billion already repatriated to the country by May 2005. The Abubakar administration was responsible for the restitution of $825 million, while the Obasanjo administration accounted for the remaining $1.175 billion (ThisDay, 13 May 2005).
9As the data in Table 4.2 show, Switzerland, a well-known fiscal paradise, was the principal destination for Abacha and his cronies. Between 2003 and 2005, a total of $750 million frozen in approximately 42 bank accounts was repatriated from that country in different batches (Vanguard, 17 March 2005). This gesture was consequent upon intense diplomatic pressure and even threats of legal action by the Nigerian authorities (Ribadu 2005a). The release of the funds was also based on certain conditionalities, including that the Nigerian government first begin prosecution of the accused persons at home, confirm the criminal origin of the funds concerned, and sign an undertaking guaranteeing the transparent use of any funds repatriated. The latter condition was to be supervised by the World Bank. It was after these protracted diplomatic exchanges and bargaining between both governments that the funds were released (Vanguard, 10 March 2005). The ‘Swiss bargain’ was later followed by the repatriation of $149 million from Jersey Island in November 2003 (ibid.).
Table 4.2. Estimates of Abacha funds frozen in Western banks as at July 2000 (US$)
Country | Amount | No. of accounts | No. of banks |
Switzerland | $750 million | 120 | 11 |
Liechtenstein | $100 million | NA | 3 |
Luxembourg | $630 million | NA | NA |
Great Britain | $450 million | 20 | 11 |
Total | $1.93 billion | NA | NA |
Source: ThisDay, 10 July 2000.
10After these initial signs of progress, the loot recovery effort ran into stormy waters. Apart from Switzerland and Jersey Island, other countries such as Great Britain, Luxembourg, and Liechtenstein, which also served as safe havens for Nigerian leaders’ loot, refused to show enthusiasm in response to Nigeria’s request. Their procrastinations were further helped by the capacity of the accused to exploit existing loopholes in the legal systems both at home and abroad to their own advantage. For instance, in April 2002, confronted by mounting legal expenses, a slow legal system, and the uncooperative attitudes of accused persons, the Nigerian government entered into an accord with the family of the late Abacha, which provided that about $1 billion (out of $1.1 billion frozen in accounts in Switzerland, Great Britain, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, and Jersey Island) be released to the Nigerian authorities. In exchange, all legal processes instituted by the Nigerian government against the Abacha family were to be dropped. According to the terms of the agreement, the Abacha family would also keep $100 million (The Guardian, 19 August 2004). This accord, however, was unilaterally repudiated by Abacha’s eldest son, who, once released from detention, claimed that the accord never existed (Ugolor 2002). Fully aware that he could play for time and hoping that a more pliant president would emerge in 2007, he chose to continue his battle with the government in the Nigerian courts.
11Throughout the eight years Obasanjo was in office, Luxembourg, which had frozen $600 million ‘owned’ by Abacha and his cronies (BBC News, 9 May 2000), and also Liechtenstein failed to repatriate any funds, despite passing new laws following international pressure. As for Great Britain, another favoured destination for looted assets from Nigeria,5 only a very tiny fraction of funds held was released (BBC News, 8 March 2001). This was despite the many cultural and historical links between Britain and Nigeria and multiple diplomatic pressures from Abuja. The presence of a host of legal instruments on judicial cooperation6 was of no help (Daniel 2003). The British long continued to insist on the need to first initiate prosecution in Nigeria and provide credible proofs linking the accused to the assets. Even when such steps were taken, the British maintained they were insufficient (The Guardian, 26 January 2001).
12After much pressure, £3 million ($3.9 million) was returned to Nigeria in December 2003 by the British authorities. The return was made possible only by the conviction of one Uri David, who was one of the financiers of Tony Blair’s Labour Party, for laundering millions of dollars for the late Sani Abacha (ThisDay, 28 December 2003). On 2 February 2005, the British Minister for Africa, Chris Mullin, announced that “we have discovered in British banks about £30 million smuggled out of the country by former Head of State Sani Abacha … the money is frozen pending court proceedings and once the proceedings are resolved the money will be returned to Nigeria” (ThisDay, 3 February 2005). This declaration, however, did not lead to the repatriation of any significant sum.
13Western governments were clearly not of much assistance to Nigeria’s quest for the recovery of its assets. However, the uncooperative attitude of Western countries and their strict legal systems or rules were not the only challenges that confronted the Nigerian government. The less-than-transparent nature of the recovery campaign and daily reports about incumbent officials committing similar crimes ensured that the exercise did not attract much domestic sympathy or support. The editors of The Punch, one of Nigeria’s most respected newspapers, were every incisive when they observed that “unless the Federal Government reassesses its loot-recovery efforts, relief may be far from ordinary Nigerians that bear the brunt of corruption. Apart from lack of transparency that has attended Nigeria’s loot-recovery process, much of the national wealth continues to be siphoned into private offshore accounts” (The Punch, 27 December 2004).
14In other words, aside from the international community, many Nigerian citizens were also worried about the poor level of transparency and accountability that characterised Obasanjo’s international loot-recovery exercise. Indeed, it was a known fact that the Nigerian leadership was resisting international and domestic pressure to publish detailed information periodically concerning the loot recovery (the amounts recovered, those from whom they were recovered, banks where funds came from, the agents or intermediaries employed in these operations, the fees or commissions incurred, etc.). These contradictions, no doubt, point to the limited political will of the head of government and the nature of the political stakes involved. The persistence of this same crime under the Obasanjo government only served to worsen the situation. But despite these deficiencies, Obasanjo’s loot-recovery efforts did produce some successes, the most notable being the support of critical sections of the international community for his policies.
International initiatives to facilitate the recovery of looted assets
15Even before Nigeria launched its global campaign in 1999 for the recovery of national assets siphoned off overseas, international attitudes towards this crime had been hardening. This change was clearly evident in the growing number of international conventions and treaties signed in the few years preceding Obasanjo’s arrival in power and by preventive measures taken by some of the major receivers of such assets, such as the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and even the United States of America. Many of these changes have been due to the activities of a handful of international anti-corruption NGOs, such as Transparency International, and diplomatic pressures from countries that have been victims of such crimes, like Peru and the Philippines. The arrival of the Abacha affair only made the issue more urgent, especially for the world’s leading international organizations and recipients of stolen assets.
International organizations and the campaign against illicit transfer of assets
16Until relatively recently, international laws and treaties regulating illegal cross-border financial transactions were grossly inadequate, as they tended to focus too narrowly on the bribery of foreign officials and money-laundering activities of international narcotic and terrorist networks. The OECD Convention of 1997 and the Inter-American Convention Against Corruption of 1996 are examples of international laws containing this bias. Not unexpectedly, national legislation in this area also reflected similar biases. Since then a host of international legislation seeking to prevent and punish the laundering of stolen assets has come into existence. This process was greatly helped by the September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, which forced the world’s only superpower to pressurise its allies in the EU, G8, and OECD to tighten their rules and take radical measures to fight money laundering, now seen as an important source of terrorist financing.
17One of the international legal instruments touching directly on the criminalisation, confiscation, and repatriation of proceeds of corruption is the Convention of the African Union Against Corruption, adopted in July 2003. Article 6 of this convention prohibits the transfer or receipt of the proceeds of corruption and calls for such assets to be frozen and repatriated under Article 16. It also calls on the states concerned to cooperate with each other under the framework of Mutual Legal Assistance. The European Union has a similar convention, which it adopted in 2005. At a more global level, the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime and the United Nations Convention Against Corruption have also been adopted. The first legislation came into existence in November 2000, while the second was adopted in December 2003. Both conventions require that member states take necessary measures to regulate their financial systems, prohibit corruption, prevent money laundering, initiate investigations and prosecutions, and offer international legal assistance and cooperation to countries which require them. While there have not been many successful prosecutions on the basis of these international conventions, the conviction of one of Abacha’s sons and the son’s business partner by a Swiss court for money laundering, participation in an organized criminal network, and fraud appears to demonstrate the importance of these international efforts.
18Several other international groupings have also toed the same line. The G8, the OECD, The Commonwealth, and the FATF have all committed to “… intensifying support for the adoption and implementation of effective measures to combat corruption, bribery and embezzlement by … intensifying international cooperation to recover illicitly acquired financial assets and assisting African countries in their efforts to combat money laundering” (G8 2002). The FATF, which groups together some of the most influential members of the other international organizations, has now emerged as the primary driving force of the global drive to control money laundering. Its annual list of non-cooperative countries and territories is now a major reference point for assessing progress in individual countries. Countries that find themselves on the list are usually subjected to international ridicule and even sanctions. Nigeria itself narrowly escaped sanction in 2002, when it hurriedly passed anti-money-laundering legislation. But how exactly did these international regulations impact on Nigeria’s attempts to recover its looted assets?
19International initiatives, such as conventions and treaties seeking to prevent the transfer of illicit wealth abroad, are effective only to the extent that member states are willing to enforce them within their territories. Available data showed that some of the most important safe havens (US, UK, Switzerland, etc.), including those that have been most unwilling to return stolen assets lodged in their jurisdictions (UK), have taken steps to reform their laws and financial policies to ensure that they are no longer used by criminal networks and corrupt foreign officials to hide illicit wealth. While it is true that such reforms were largely driven by international developments, such as pressure from Nigeria for the return of the Abacha loot, rather than by any altruistic desire to correct some observed deficiencies in the system, the impact of these reforms should not be underestimated.
Reactions of safe havens: Great Britain, Switzerland, and the Abacha affair
20As we said earlier, Switzerland, for practical and professional reasons (bank secrecy and international diplomatic isolation), and Great Britain, for historical and cultural reasons, are among the most preferred destinations for stashing funds stolen by Nigerian leaders. Therefore, any changes put in place in these two countries would probably have the greatest consequences for the war against corruption in Nigeria. For a number of reasons, the policies and laws of these countries have seen quite a number of changes that have tended to strengthen the ongoing Nigerian war against the transfer of national assets abroad. We will begin with Switzerland and then turn to Great Britain.
Switzerland: The quest for better reputation
21For decades, international diplomatic isolation and a culture of bank secrecy made Switzerland a preferred destination for stolen funds. Abacha, for instance, held accounts in at least 19 Swiss banks (see Table 4.3). However, since the beginning of the 1990s, when a series of lawsuits brought by families of the victims of the Jewish Holocaust began to take its toll on its reputation, Switzerland has been forced to alter its laws and policies related to banking. The impact of the lawsuits was made worse by pressure from some foreign governments, notably the US, following the September 2001 terrorist attacks, and Nigeria, desperate to recover billions of dollars stolen by its former dictator, Sani Abacha.
22For these reasons, Switzerland went further than any of the other fiscal paradises in the reform of its laws, which are now among the toughest. Its regulatory institution, in line with FATF’s recommendations, set in motion rules requiring that financial institutions should be attentive to suspicious financial transactions and their perpetrators. In Switzerland, laws criminalising money laundering (Article 305bis) and the non-exercise of ‘due diligence’ (305te) first entered into force as part of the penal code on 1 August 1990. The former penalised failure to establish the origin of funds and identify and freeze the proceeds of crime, while the latter created the obligation for financial institutions and their intermediaries to verify with reasonable diligence the identity of their clients and holders of accounts (Swiss Bankers Association 2001: 11). Effectively, with this legislation, money-laundering offences abroad could now be investigated and offenders convicted in Switzerland.
Table 4.3. List of Swiss banks holding Abacha funds
1 | Banca del Gottardo |
2 | Citibank N. A. |
3 | Goldman Sachs & Co. Bank |
4 | Merrill Lynch |
5 | UBS AG |
6 | Banque Edouard Constant SA |
7 | Banque Nationale de Paris (Suisse) SA |
8 | Banque Baring Brothers (Suisse) SA |
9 | J. Henry Schroder Bank |
10 | Pictet & Cie |
11 | SG Rüegg Bank AG |
12 | Credit Suisse |
13 | Bank Hofmann AG |
14 | Bank Leu AG |
15 | Crédit Agricole Indosuez (Suisse) SA |
16 | UBP Union Bancaire Privé |
17 | M. M. Warburg Bank (Schweiz) AG |
18 | Mirabaud & Cie |
19 | UEB United European Bank |
Source: Swiss Federal Banking Commission (2000).
23In the years that followed, other laws or amendments were introduced. These included a 1994 law authorising the confiscation of assets (Article 58ff) and a July 1998 convention binding all Swiss banks (Banks’ Obligation of Due Diligence, CDB) to identify and verify their clients and the sources of their wealth. These rules were made in compliance with Recommendations 10 and 11 of the FATF (GAFI 2003). On 10 October 1997 a more comprehensive law, the Federal Act on the Prevention of Money Laundering in the Financial Sector, was adopted. This law had two new features. One was the extension of rules hitherto applicable to banks alone to other groups (financial intermediaries, bureaux de change, dealers in precious stones, estate agents, etc.). The second was the obligation to alert the authorities (Money Laundering Reporting Office, MROS) of suspicious transactions. Any violation was subject to prosecution.
24However, the presence of these laws did nothing to keep out Abacha’s money, nor did it encourage the Swiss to act without prompting from abroad, until 1999 when the Nigerian government began its search for Abacha’s loot. Even the directive on Politically Exposed Persons (Government of Switzerland 2002), prohibiting the acceptance of funds presumed to come from corruption, came too late. Abacha died in June 1998, while the directive was issued in January 1998. In fact, it only became law after the Abacha scandal exploded (Swiss Federal Banking Commission 2000: 13). Nevertheless, the Abacha affair and indeed the changes in Swiss laws, financial regulations, and practices still had consequences for the global campaign against corruption, and the one led by President Obasanjo in particular.
25One of the consequences was that henceforth all clients from Nigeria must now be considered high-risk customers by all 342 banks in Switzerland. Following these changes, reports on suspicious transactions to the Money Laundering Reporting Office increased from 303 in 1999 to 652 in 2002, representing a 56% increase, while in 2003 they went up by another 50% (Swiss Federal Banking Commission 2003: 66). Apart from some assistance to the government of Nigeria on recovery of funds, the Swiss also acted more or less unilaterally – for example, when the country requested Germany to arrest Abacha’s second son, Abba Abacha. He was picked up in the city of Neuss, Germany, on 9 December 2004 on the order of a Geneva court, allegedly while attempting to close a bank account (The Punch, 10 January 2005). He has since been jailed in Switzerland.
Great Britain: The Abacha affair as a trigger
26In January 2004, officers of the London Metropolitan Police received tip-offs suggesting that Governor Joshua Dariye of Plateau State had violated British and Nigerian money-laundering laws. Mr Dariye was said to own eight bank accounts in Britain, containing over £2 million ($2.6 million), in violation of provisions of the Nigerian Constitution, and some landed property estimated at £395,000 ($517,450) in London (Financial Times, 3 December 2004). On the basis of these allegations, he was arrested while on a visit to the British capital on 2 September 2004. On the day of his arrest, he was in possession of an undeclared sum of £90,000 ($117,900), in open violation of British legislation on money laundering. After being granted bail, Dariye absconded to Nigeria, where he enjoys constitutional immunity against arrest and prosecution. In swift response, all his assets in the United Kingdom were frozen, while an international warrant for his arrest was issued at the request of the London Metropolitan Police and the Crown Prosecution Service (ThisDay, 24 February 2005). Just a few months after Dariye’s arrest, on 17 September 2005 Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, Governor of the oil-rich Bayelsa State, was arrested upon his arrival in London for being in possession of over $100,000 in undeclared cash. Following subsequent raids on his home, $1 million in cash was found in his London home and £800,000 ($1.048 million) in his bank accounts in Britain (The Times, 7 September 2005). Alamieyeseigha, who was later arraigned before a Lagos court for embezzling and laundering over a billion dollars between 1999 and 2005 (The Guardian, 21 December 2005), also escaped from London after being granted bail. Like Dariye, his property in London, estimated at £10 million ($13.1) million, was frozen (ThisDay, 7 October 2005). According to the British authorities, several other highly placed Nigerians were under investigation for similar offences at the time (ThisDay, 25 January 2005). These unprecedented measures by the British authorities pointed to changes in British policy which were not unrelated to the September 2001 attacks in the US, but which were also linked to the international embarrassment caused by the Abacha affair.
27The role of the British banking system in the Abacha affair was first raised during the investigations conducted by the Swiss Federal Banking Commission on the Abacha loot in 2000. The investigations established that a third of the Abacha money found in Swiss banks had passed through banks in Britain, Austria, and the USA (Swiss Federal Banking Commission 2000: 13). These allegations were subsequently confirmed by the British-based Financial Services Authority (FSA) and the Nigerian government, which believed that at least $1.9 billion had been sent through London. Before the Abacha affair, Britain had no policy on the repatriation of funds linked to corruption. This was largely because confiscated funds until very recently tended to come from or be linked to drug trafficking and without an obvious victim. Therefore, the existing rules and practices favoured the confiscation and retention of such funds by the British authorities (DFID 2002). The arrival of the Abacha scandal brought dramatic changes in these procedures.
28In November 2001, under pressure over the Abacha loot, representatives of judicial and banking regulatory institutions of the G7 (including Britain) met at Lausanne, Switzerland at the initiative of the Swiss to discuss the issue of Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs) and the Abacha affair in particular (Swiss Federal Banking Commission 2003: 25). The meeting took a decision to reinforce vigilance measures (Enhanced Due Diligence Procedures) with respect to PEPs. Before this multilateral initiative, the British had even started their own internal process of change. In October 1998, for instance, Prime Minister Tony Blair had inaugurated a committee to examine arrangements in place for the recovery of stolen wealth in Britain and suggest measures to increase the effectiveness of the system. In its report published in June 2000, the committee highlighted a number of shortcomings in the system. It also stressed the need to consolidate all existing laws on money laundering and confiscation of proceeds of crime into a single piece of legislation (United Kingdom 2000). This legislation was adopted on 31 July 2002, under the title Proceeds of Crime Act of 2000 (POCA), and entered into force progressively between December 2002 and March 2003 (United Kingdom 2002).
29The arrival of the POCA opened new opportunities to countries seeking to recover illegally transferred assets in Britain, including Nigeria. Unlike in the past, assets acquired through corruption, along with assets from drug trafficking and other crimes, can now be confiscated and repatriated to their owners (Section 327-329). According to Sections 294 and 370 of the Act, assets may be frozen on the orders of the Crown Courts as soon as investigations (not prosecutions, as in the past) are launched. All countries will now also benefit from mutual legal assistance. The previous arrangement had restricted the privilege to some specifically designated countries and thus excluded a number of developing countries. Similarly, under Section 330, financial institutions are to report cases to the authorities on the basis of suspicion, not actual knowledge. Finally, the POCA established a central institution, Asset Recovery Agency (ARA), to be responsible for the coordination of British asset recovery strategy7.
30Soon after the POCA came into existence, a few Nigerian officials went on to sample its potency. On 10 November 2004 a Director with the Department of National Civic Registration, a parastatal of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Chris Agidi, became its first victim when he was arrested at Heathrow Airport in possession of £200,000 ($262,000) stocked in a suitcase. It is noteworthy that he was actually arrested on suspicion of belonging to a terrorist network, which highlights the impact of the 11 September 2001 events. Only after further investigations did the authorities confirm that the money was part of bribes paid by a French company (SAGEM SA) to some Nigerian officials to win a national identity card project in 2002. Mr. Agidi made his first court appearance before the Southwark Crown Court in London on 18 January 2006 (The Guardian, 19 January 2006). In another incident, on 12 December 2005, the Stratford Magistrates’ Court in London, relying on Article 301 of the POCA, ordered the repatriation of N23 million (£117,000 or $153,270) seized from Governor Joshua Dariye following his arrest in London in September 2004. This move, according to one British official, Sgt. Bob Ingram, was intended to “send out a clear message to Nigerian politicians that if they bring any illicit money to this country (United Kingdom), we will seize them and return the money to Nigeria, because the money belongs to the Nigerian people” (The Guardian, 13 December 2005.). One of Dariye’s accomplices, Joyce Bamidele Oyebanjo, who aided in laundering £1.4 million ($1.8 million), was convicted by the same court in April 2007. Mrs Oyebanjo, who must serve a three-year sentence, was also ordered to refund £198,045 ($259,438) to the Nigerian government (The Guardian, 6 June 2007). On 6 July 2006, the British government said it intended to repatriate up to £250 million ($327.5 million) to the Nigerian government (The Punch, 12 July 2006). According to the Head of the Specialist Crimes and Anti-Money Laundering Team, Mr. Peter Clarke, all this “demonstrates the success of our application of the Proceeds of Crime Act to stop criminals benefitting from illegally obtained money … We believe these types of seizures will help deter financial crime in both London and Nigeria” (ThisDay, 7 July 2006).
Conclusion
31After a prolonged silence, the international community began supporting efforts aimed at combating corruption, notably illicit transfer of looted assets abroad by public officials in developing countries, an epidemic that has been ravaging the political economy of many developing countries for decades. This support involved not only giving technical support to countries that are interested in preventing the illicit transfer of public assets overseas, but also diplomatic help to those seeking the recovery of assets, already siphoned off by corrupt officials from those states, to help meet national development needs (Daniel 2004; Turner 2004). It was within this context that the Nigerian campaign, launched in 1998 to recover public funds looted under the Abacha regime and stashed in Western banks, can be situated.
32While in power, President Obasanjo sought to intensify this effort, taking advantage of the changed attitude of the international community. Much of his efforts, widely believed to have had a salutary effect on the global fight against international money laundering, failed to achieve their intended results, however, owing to a combination of several domestic and international factors. Even though President Obasanjo’s effort cannot be considered a total failure, given the positive way it has impacted on the global financial system (witness the many reforms that have taken place in Switzerland in the last few years), the effort did not lead to any substantial repatriation of looted Nigerian funds held in foreign banks. Several factors combined to limit the impact of his campaign, one of them being an inefficient judicial system and limited investigative skills in Nigeria. There was also a noticeable shortage of political will, both at home and abroad. To the dismay of many Nigerians and members of the international community, public funds continue to be siphoned off by incumbent Nigerian officials.8
Notes de bas de page
1 According to a UN study, Nigerians hold an estimated $170 billion in foreign bank accounts and assets (usually landed property), most of these in Western countries (United Nations 2002).
2 In 1984, a move by the Mohammadu Buhari military regime, requesting the aid of the British government in recovering funds embezzled and stashed in British banks by the political-tycoon class of the Second Republic (1979-83), the very first of its kind, was quietly abandoned once the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, announced her intention to publish a list of Nigerians owning bank accounts in Britain (Graf 1988: 177).
3 Abacha died on the 8 of June 1998, allegedly from a cardiac arrest.
4 In March 2000, Vice-President Atiku Abubakar told Newsweek magazine that “legislations dealing with secret accounts have now been eased, liberalized. Countries that can demonstrate that their resources were stolen and stashed away can now bring them back. It gives us hope that we will be able to return some of our stolen wealth … We are encouraged with the responses we have so far” (Newsweek, 13 March 2000).
5 According to Britain’s Financial Services Authority (FSA), 42 British banks handled some $1.3 billion for the Abacha family and their cronies between 1996 and 2000. Out of these 42 banks, 15 were guilty of significant control weakness in their anti-money-laundering controls (BBC News, 8 March 2001).
6 These treaties included the pact on Mutual Legal Assistance between Britain and Nigeria, the Harare Scheme of 1987 on mutual assistance in the area of the fight against crime among Commonwealth nations, and the Convention of the Council of Europe of 1990.
7 The ARA has since been merged with another institution, known as the Serious Organized Crime Agency.
8 For instance, in July 201 the erstwhile Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Nigeria’s most feared anti-corruption agency, estimated that some of Nigeria’s state governors had transferred at least $10 billion between the time the current democratic experiment began in May 1999 and when he left office in December 2008. See ThisDay, 21 July 2010. Some of these governors have already been convicted for money laundering, or illegally operating foreign accounts, while many others are currently standing trial for the same offences.

Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence Creative Commons - Attribution - Partage dans les Mêmes Conditions 4.0 International - CC BY-SA 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.
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