Former Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, has rejected the allegations made by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission concerning the recovery of the $322.5 million Abacha loot, describing the accusations as “baseless, illogical and unsupported by facts.”
Malami, who honoured an EFCC invitation on Friday, November 28, was later released and given new dates for continued questioning.
The investigation centres on alleged duplication in the recovery process, as well as accusations of abuse of office and money laundering.
In a statement issued on Sunday, Malami said the EFCC’s position was built on the assumption that a Swiss lawyer, Enrico Monfrini, had already completed the recovery before he took office in 2015.
He argued that this claim collapses when matched against official records. He explained that illicit funds cannot be regarded as recovered until they are paid into the Federation Account and noted that, as of 2016, when the administration of President Buhari re-examined the issue, no such payment had been recorded.
Malami further stated that several lawyers, including Monfrini, submitted applications in December 2016 seeking to be contracted for the same recovery effort, a move he said contradicts the belief that the process had been concluded years earlier.
He revealed that Monfrini demanded an upfront fee of $5 million and a success fee of 40 per cent, later revised to 20 per cent.
According to him, the government rejected these conditions because its policy prohibited advance payments and capped fees at no more than 5 per cent.
He noted that a Nigerian law firm was eventually selected on a 5 per cent success fee, saving the country between 15 and 35 per cent of the recovered funds, which amounts to several tens of billions of naira at today’s exchange rate.
Malami explained that the Abacha funds recovered under his watch were released in separate tranches. The first was $322.5 million repatriated from Switzerland between 2017 and 2018, which was directed to Conditional Cash Transfers under the National Social Investment Programme and monitored by the World Bank and civil society organisations.
The second was $321 million returned from Jersey in 2020, allocated to major national infrastructure such as the Lagos–Ibadan Expressway, the Abuja–Kano Road and the Second Niger Bridge.
He insisted that any attempt to merge the tranches or suggest duplication is inconsistent with the facts. Malami maintained that all his actions as Attorney General were carried out “transparently and in the public interest,” stressing that the allegations against him have no credible foundation.
