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Tony John, Port Harcourt
The United Kingdom (UK) is alleged to have received not less than £90 billion shady funds across the world yearly.
The revealation is cointained in a joint paper titled “Obtaining Property Information Overseas”, presented at the ongoing anti-corruption training organized by the Human and Environmental Development Agenda (HEDA Resource Centre) in collaboration with international groups, The Corner House, Kent Law School, all in the UK, MacArthur Foundation and the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA). Among the experts, who made the disclosure yesterday, were world acclaimed anti-corruption advocates, Christian Erikson and Lionel Faull. The experts said most of the stolen funds were from public officials from third world countries, including Nigeria.
The experts maintained that 87,000 illicit assets in UK are owned by anonymous companies in tax havens, while the value of secretly owned property in the UK were between £56 billion to £100 billion. According to them, 40 percent of these property are in the city of London.
The two-day programme held in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, drew 70 civil society organisations, media, labour and representatives of anti-corruption institutions across the southern region of Nigeria.
In his remarks, Nick Hildyard, an anti-corruption investigator, said, though the UK has one of the most effective anti-corruption laws, but in reality, the country did not appear to be fully prepared to stall the wave of corruption with its financial institutions providing the logistics for corrupt officials from Nigeria.
“The UK is a legally corrupt country”, Hildyard said, adding that if Western countries genuinely wish to fight corruption, they should stop the warehouse of stolen funds from Nigeria.
Faull said: “Getting your money back is easier said than done. It takes a long time. If you do not support corruption, there is no need doing banking with Nigeria. The fight against corruption will not succeed without a very active citizenry. It requires international solidarity, teaming up with civil society in order to work with international organisations and make authorities accountable”.
In his presentation, the HEDA Chairman, Mr. Olanrewaju Suraju, said about 456 top Nigerian public officials holding strategic positions, were yet to declare their assets in spite of the regulations put in place by the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB).
Speaking at the conference, the Special Adviser to President Mohammadu Buhari on National Social Investment Programme (N-SIP), Mrs. Maryam Uwais,said millions of Nigerians have never felt the impact of the government.
Uwais commended the Federal Government’s efforts at fighting poverty by ploughing recovered stolen wealth into meeting the essentials of poor individuals across the 36 states of the federation.
