The whistleblower policy introduced about two months ago by the federal government to track down looters of the country’s treasury is already yielding results with the recovery of $151 million and N8 billion looted funds respectively since it came into effect.
The looted funds were said to have been recovered from three sources through whistleblowers who gave actionable information to the office of the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation.
Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, who disclosed this yesterday, said that the $136,676,600.51 was recovered from a commercial bank where the money was kept under an apparently fake account, followed by N7 billion and $15 million from another person and N1 billion from yet another.
In a statement he issued and made available to LEADERSHIP on Sunday, the minister said, ‘’Yet, whatever has been recovered so far, including the $9.2 million by the EFCC, is just a tip of the iceberg.
‘’When we told Nigerians that there was a primitive and mindless looting of the national treasury under the last administration, some people called us liars. Well, the whistleblower policy is barely two months old and Nigerians have started feeling its impact, seeing how a few people squirreled away public funds.
“It is doubtful if any economy in the world will not feel the impact of such mind-boggling looting of the treasury as was experienced in Nigeria.”
Mohammed appealed to Nigerians with useful information on looted funds to continue to provide the authorities with such information, even as he assured that confidentiality will be maintained in respect to the source of the information.
Reminding Nigerians of the financial reward of the policy, he said, ‘’If there is a voluntary return of stolen or concealed public funds or assets on account of the information provided, the whistleblower may be entitled to anywhere between 2.5 per cent (minimum) and 5.0 percent (maximum) of the total amount recovered.”
LEADERSHIP recalls that the Federal Executive Council (FEC) in December approved the whistle-blower program designed to encourage anyone with information about the stealing of public funds to report it.
The government said at the time that under the novel program if there is a voluntary return of stolen or concealed public funds or assets on the account of the information provided by the whistleblower, such a person will get between 2.5 per cent and five per cent of the amount recovered.
Finance minister, Kemi Adeosun, had explained that the type of information that could be reported include mismanagement or misappropriation of public funds and assets (e.g. properties and vehicles), financial malpractice or fraud.
She listed some of the financial malpractices as “collecting/soliciting bribes, corruption, diversion of revenues, fraudulent and unapproved payments, splitting of contracts and procurement fraud (kickbacks and over-invoicing etc).”
According to her, the benefits of the programme, include: increasing the exposure of financial or financial-related crimes; supporting the fight against financial crimes and corruption; improving the level of public confidence in public entities; enhancing transparency and accountability in the management of public funds; improving Nigeria’s open government ranking and ease of doing business indicators, and the recovery of public funds that can be deployed to finance Nigeria’s infrastructure deficit.
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