…As US repatriates $150m, freezes $3.5bn in one year
More revelations are still emerging from the recently marked International Anti-Corruption Day in parts of the world.
In Nigeria, the Day which came with the theme: ‘United against corruption for development, peace and security’, witnessed a nationwide walk by staff and supporters of the anti-graft agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
However, the United Nations said every year $1 trillion is paid in bribes while an estimated $2.6 trillion are stolen annually through corruption – a sum equivalent to more than 5 per cent of the global GDP. In developing countries, according to the United Nations Development Programme, funds lost to corruption are estimated at 10 times the amount of official development assistance.
Besides, the US authorities said they have repatriated about $150 million of stolen money to countries from which they were stolen, frozen $3.5 billion in assets linked to foreign corruption and efforts are underway to do more.
Speaking in a teleconference with journalists around the world on Friday December 8, 2017 following the December 4-6 Global Forum on Asset Recovery and its anti-corruption programming in Africa, Robert Leventhal, Deputy Director in the Office of Anti-Crime Programmes in the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs at the Department of State said: “As we said, we’ve repatriated about $150 million. To date, we’ve got $3.5 billion in the pipeline. At the Global Forum on Asset Recovery just a couple of days ago, Switzerland signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Nigeria to return $321 million in stolen assets. So the cases can take a long time but they are having more and more success.”
