The Acting Chairman of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ibrahim Magu, has said that
the anti-graft agency is working to establish evidence before inviting the
former president, Goodluck Jonathan and other accomplices in the arms purchase
scandal.
He said this when he visited the office of the BBC Hausa service in London at the weekend.
According to him, the EFCC would not skip
anybody found culpable in the ongoing probe of arms purchase scandal or other
misappropriation of public funds.
He was asked when his agency would
summon the former president since the scandal occurred under his stewardship.
"Anybody that is involved in this scandal, we will invite him. It is only
that we have to first establish our evidence.
Anybody who is guilty, I swear, we
will summon him wherever he is. And we have never invited anybody who is
guilty. Anybody that we invited, we must have finished with our background
study on him.
"We spend not just days for the background work but months until we establish the case before we issue invitation. That is why none of the people we invited has come out clean.
Whoever stole public funds and we establish our
evidence, I'm telling you we will invite him, without cover. That is how the
work is. We compile dossiers of proofs and facts before we invite," he said.
Asked on the amount recovered by the EFCC in the ongoing investigations, he said Nigerians would know the amount by May 29, when all the details would be revealed.
"Because of what is going on, I can't tell you the exact amount we have recovered so far. But we are still collecting the monies. I can't tell you for now, but what we have recovered within this period alone, was never recorded since the establishment of the EFCC in 2003," he said.
On reports saying the EFCC had recovered $3.1bn so far, he said, "Actually, what we recovered is way beyond that figure. I don't want to let it out now. On 29 May, we will disclose every detail and Nigerians will know what we have done.”
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