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The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has seized jewellery worth N14.6 billion from former Minister of Petroleum, Diezani Allison-Madueke.
EFCC Chairman, Abdulrasheed Bawa, made this known at the House of Representatives adhoc committee investigating the assessment and status of recovered loot on Friday in Abuja
He also said the houses seized from the former minister are also valued at 80 million dollars.
The anti-graft chairman said that Diezani’s jewellery are still in the custody of the agency, adding that it had not been auctioned but had been finally forfeited to the Federal Government.
He said that court processes, procedures and administrative exigencies had stalled some of the seized assets to be auctioned by the anti-graft agency.
Bawa, however, said that the agency would henceforth deal with the seized assets case-by-case at the courts in order to quickly dispose them.
“Already the Federal Government has set up a committee under the chairmanship of the Solicitor-General for the Federation and I think they are working tirelessly.” he informed.
This, according to him, is to ensure that assets that are not only recovered by the EFCC, but the entirety of the recovery agencies, are disposed off.
“We have EFCC representatives from that committee and we believe at the end of the day, Nigerians are going to appreciate what that committee will come out with in terms of the mandate given to them,” he said.
Asked when the committee would wind up so the assets could be disposed, Bawa said that he is not a member of the committee to know how soon.
Bawa said that in its quest to transform the agency, it would soon digitalise its processes, adding that it had also created and upgraded four additional departments to restore confidence.
He listed the departments to include: Intelligence, Procurement, Internal Affairs and the Information Communication Technology.
He said there was no loot that had been re-looted as being speculated, stressing that going forward, the EFCC would be different and Nigerians would be better for it.
The EFCC chairman said he would always honour the National Assembly’s invitation to account for what the agency had done, adding that public servants come and go but the institution would remain./NAN