Former chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu has said that the world including Nigeria must unite to ensure that there is no safe haven for stolen money and no hiding place for corrupt people.
Ribadu while speaking in Abuja said “The world has to unite so that there will be no safe haven for stolen money and no hiding place for corrupt people.”
He also observed that the EFCC was successful because “we built strong networks globally, especially with the UK and the US.”
Ribadu also expressed his regrets on the inability of Nigeria to investigate and punish all those who were implicated in the Halliburton bribery case.
He said “I first got hint of the case in France. I got back home and tried to investigate the case but it was very difficult or probably impossible because the companies were not here in Nigeria, they didn’t have account there, the people were not there. They had left.
“I rushed back to Paris. I was in Paris many times. I put in a request letter but after a year of trying to get French authorities to help us, the investigating magistrate told me that they could not get anyone to translate my letter from English to French. I knew it was a hopeless case.
“The Department of Justice in the United States took up the case. They investigated and prosecuted the case. They placed a fine of over $1.5 billion on the company, the biggest in the world for corporate corruption.”
The Halliburton case was a $1.5 billion bribery scandal, although top Nigerians involved were not questioned or jailed in the country, others from other countries are currently serving various jail terms.
The top Nigerians involved in the case reportedly got a total of $184 million within 10 years from an Italian firm that got a $6 billion gas project job in Nigeria.
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