The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, on Monday assured Nigerians that negotiations were ongoing with a number of countries on modalities for the repatriation of stolen funds stashed abroad.
The minister stated that the Federal Government is in touch with Switzerland, the United Kingdom (UK), the United States (US), among other foreign governments around the world on how all looted funds could be recovered.
He spoke in an interview with diplomatic correspondents in Abuja.
According to him, “We are in touch with Switzerland; they have recently recovered quite significant amount of money and I met last week with Swiss representatives to work out the modality for the repatriation of this fund.”
He noted that the Swiss government has already repatriated over $700 million of the Abacha loot and that agreement has been reached on how the money would be applied.
“They have also now recovered in the same context another $300 million of which there is ongoing discussion to have that repatriated as well. There are discussions with other countries; United Kingdom (UK), for instance, as you all know, there are ongoing discussions there.
“You know that one of the first countries Mr President visited earlier on after his election was United States where he had discussion. So, there are ongoing discussions with a number of governments around the world and I will like to take the opportunity again to say that the goodwill generated by Mr President has helped enormously in this whole process and a lot of countries are extremely cooperative to this end,” he said.
By mynewswatchtimes
