On Monday, March 6, 2017, the lower chamber of the legislative arm of the government has resolved to look into the forfeited assets the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC’s custody, in order ascertain their conditions and valuations.
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| House of Rep |
The resolution of the House follows a motion sponsored by Rep Benson Babajimi, who is from Ikorodu Federal Constituency, Lagos State, entitled, “Need to ascertain the dumps and take an inventory of the forfeited assets in possession of theEconomic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.”
The House presided over by the number 4 citizen, the Speaker, Yakubu Dogara after debating on the motion, tasked its Committee on Financial Crimes to “carry out an audit of car dumps and inventory of other movable and immovable forfeited assets seized by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to ascertain their conditions and current values and make recommendations to the House within six (6) weeks on how to prevent further decay and waste“.
Benson Babajimi had in the motion stated that “pursuant to Section 20(1) of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission’s Establishment Act 2004, a person convicted of an offence shall forfeit to the Federal Government all the assets and properties which may or are the subject of interim order of the court.”
He also brought back the attention of lawmakers to section 26, saying: “that Section 26 of the Act provides that the Commission may seize any property subject to forfeiture after an attachment of such property.”
According to him, “acting under these provisions, the EFCC, since its establishment in 2003, has seized several movable and immovable properties and assets under interim orders of Courts in order to preserve the properties/assets and prevent them from being disposed of by the suspects while cases were being investigated or tried;
“Also aware that the EFCC maintains dump sites in various parts of the country where it keeps the movable assets while immovable assets are sealed off by the Commission;
“Further aware that several of these assets have been there for several years while some are already at various stages of decay, and convinced of the need to avoid this needless waste of recovered properties which would otherwise have yielded some much needed revenues to the national treasury.”
