‘We are working with UAE to recover stolen funds,’ FG says

This was disclosed by Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, during a news conference on Thursday, March 24, 2016, in Abuja, Punch reports.

“Yes, there are Mutual Legal Assistance Agreements signed by UAE and other countries to facilitate dealing with stolen funds,” he said.

“UAE is one of the countries we are clearly looking at in terms of repatriating Nigeria’s resources, but how much we are looking at, we don’t have any figure in respect of that.

“But hopefully, it would be significant because we really need it. Oil prices being where they are, we really need to get as much of our stolen funds back as possible,” he added.

Earlier reports had it that officials of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had embarked on a trip to the UAE for the purpose of recovering $200 billion worth of looted funds.

“Yes, the AGF and the EFCC chairman with some top officials of the anti-graft agency are in Dubai for a follow-up technical session on the Mutual Legal Assistance between Nigeria and the UAE,” a government source said.

“I can confirm the official trip and it is meant to recover looted funds,” the source added.

Kaduna State Senator, Shehu Sani had recently revealed that Nigerian officials had stashed over $200 billion in Dubai alone.

The Nigerian government had, on January 19, 2016, signed a bilateral agreementwith the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to enable the extradition of corrupt officials hiding stolen funds in Dubai.

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