 |
| Magu |
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on Friday said it never claimed it has paid the whistleblower responsible for the $43.4million Osborne Tower, Ikoyi bust.
The Commission said it is directly responsible for the payment of the five percent reward given to whistleblowers.
This is contained in a statement released by the EFCC spokesperson Wilson Uwujaren in Abuja.
The statement said:“Following publications in sections of the social media today, November 10, it has become necessary to clarify the statement credited to the acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Ibrahim Magu regarding the status of the whistleblower in the Osborne Tower cash recovery.
What Magu said at the 7th Session of the Council of State Parties to the United Nations Convention Against Corruption in Vienna, Austria, was that citizens should be encouraged to embrace whistleblowing because of the incentives attached.
"To illustrate this, he stated that the gentleman who provided the information that triggered the huge recovery at Osborne Towers in Ikoyi was already a millionaire based on the incentive in the whistleblower policy where information providers are entitled to between 2.5 and 5 % of the recovered sum.
Hear him, “We are currently working on the young man because this is just a man who has not seen one million Naira of his own before. So he is under counseling on how to make good use of the money and also the security implication. We don’t want anything bad to happen to him after taking delivery of his entitlement. He is a national pride.”
"Magu never said that the young man has been paid. The Commission is not even directly responsible for the payment of rewards to whistleblowers.
"There is also no controversy about the exact amount recovered in the operation which was streamed live, the first of its kind, and witnessed by the whistleblower, security at the Towers and representative of the agency which claimed ownership of the money.”
Tags
Business