Malami’s billions traced to Abacha loot, Paris Club refunds, CBN agric loans – Report

Investigators have linked a bulk of the wealth of Abubakar Malami, the former attorney-general of the federation, to a number of sources, TheCable can report.

At the top of the list are Paris Club refunds made to states, unpaid loans taken from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) under the anchor borrowers programme, and the restitution of Abacha loot to Nigeria.

Malami has been detained by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) ahead of his arraignment before a federal high court in Abuja.

Properties estimated at over N200 billion have been traced to Malami. The assets are believed to have been acquired when he was attorney-general under former President Muhammadu Buhari from 2015 to 2023.

He has denied all allegations in statements by his media team, alleging political persecution and promising to defend himself in court.

PARIS CLUB REFUNDS

On the legal advice of Malami, the federal government had decided to deduct $418 million from state allocations as payment to consultants over the Paris Club refund.

Nigeria had exited the Paris Club of creditors in 2005 after paying $12 billion in exchange for a write-off of $18 billion of its $30 billion debts accumulated from the early 1980s.

However, the federal government, under former President Obasanjo, paid the $12 billion from the federation purse regardless of how much was owed by the federal, state and local governments to the creditors.

After the states protested, it was decided that they should be refunded since most of the debts were taken by the federal government — with most states not owing foreign creditors.

Consultants were engaged by the federal government to calculate how much was to be refunded to the states, and they charged a commission in excess of $400 million.

The Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) opposed the arrangement, but Malami insisted that the consultants must be paid from state allocations, to be deducted at source.

In a media spat between 2021 and 2022, the NGF accused Malami of pursuing “selfish interest” and alleged that he was working for the consultants rather than in the national interest.

“We’re constrained by the manner in which the honorable attorney-general has been going around various media houses and purporting to create the impression that this is a liability to which governors had committed themselves to and agreed to, even though he is very much aware that that’s not the case,” the NGF said.

“And we reject all of the claims that he has made on this issue. And we also insist that states will not give up on insisting that these purported claims are fraudulent and will not stand as far as governors are concerned and we would take every constitutional and legal means to ensure that these purported consultancy are fully litigated upon by the highest court in the land.”

After initially stopping payment, Buhari later gave his approval, much to the disappointment of the governors.

EFCC investigators have traced the bulk of Malami’s alleged sudden wealth to kickbacks from the deal, sources in the know told TheCable.

ANCHOR BORROWERS’ PROGRAMME

In 2015, the CBN launched the anchor borrowers programme (ABP) — a development finance initiative to boost local food production, create jobs, and reduce food imports.

The ABP was to provide farmers with farm inputs such as seeds, fertiliser and cash for labour, to enable them to increase yields and supply processors.

This was to create a value chain linkage from farm to market and supporting food.

Investigators discovered that Malami used the name of one of his wives, Hajiya Bashir Asabe, to get a N4 billion loan, which was never repaid.

The wife has now been charged to court along with him.

The CBN dispensed over N1 trillion on the ABP and is yet to recover over N600 billion, fuelling speculation that a significant portion of the disbursements might have been slush fund for politicians.

ABACHA LOOT COMMISSION

In 2016, Malami hired the services of two Nigerian lawyers — Oladipo Okpeseyi and Temitope Isaac Adebayo — for the repatriation of $321 million stolen by Sani Abacha, the former military head of state.

The repatriation of the stolen funds started before the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015.

The monies had been recovered and frozen in 2013 under former President Goodluck Jonathan, but the repatriation process was stalled in 2015 following a lawsuit filed by the Abachas.

From 2013 to 2014, the federal government had engaged the services of Swiss lawyers, Enrico Monfrini and Christian Luscher, to recover the stolen funds from Liechtenstein and Luxembourg — and domiciled the monies with the attorney-general of Switzerland.

Nigeria had paid four percent of the recovered Luxembourg assets as professional fees and expenses to the foreign lawyers, in addition to roughly $6.8 million in fees paid to Monfrini for the Liechtenstein recoveries.

Since all the fees had been paid by Nigeria, it was only required that Malami, who was the then AGF, would sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Swiss authorities and commit to an undertaking that the funds would be properly utilised.

However, in December 2017, Malami, in a suspicious move, engaged the services of the two Nigerian lawyers, which cost the country $16.9 million as commission and professional fees from the recovered funds.

Malami engaged the two lawyers to duplicate the job of the Swiss lawyers and get their own cut from the already done deal.

TheCable understands that Okpeseyi and Adebayo have been detained and interrogated by the EFCC.

“They made useful statements to the EFCC,” a source in the know told TheCable.

After the disbursement of the duplicated commission, payments were said to have been traced to Malami by investigators at the anti-graft agency. (The Cable)