Agency recovers N553m from PDP Chieftains in southeast

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The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has recovered N553.77 million from alleged corrupt politicians in the South East, the agency's Zonal Head of Operations, Mr. Johnson Babalola said.

Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, August 15, in Enugu, Babalola said the 'stolen' funds were recovered from Chieftains of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

He said the funds were part of the 'loot' the party illegally appropriated to itself for its 'shady' activities in the 2015 general elections in the zone.

He revealed that the commission recovered N300 million, N82.5 million and N60 million from chieftains of the party in Ebonyi, Abia and Enugu States respectively.

Babalola said: "We have recovered N300m out of N400m in Ebonyi. In Abia, we recovered N82.5m out of N450m while we got N60m in Enugu out of N450m.

"However, we are facing some challenges in Anambra and Imo but the commission is working on them".

According to him, the EFCC will prosecute all staff of the Independent National Electoral Commission in Imo, Anambra and Enugu found culpable once the courts resumes from vacation.

He said, "Within the period, we received a total of 503 petitions from Nigerians out of which 333 were approved for investigation while others not under our the purview of the EFCC were referred to sister agencies.

"We charged 88 of such cases to court and have so far obtained five convictions.

"Some of them have sued us for fundamental rights violations and enforcement but the judiciary has been cooperating with us.

"We have not been found to have impugned on the rights of others."

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The EFCC zonal official added that the then executive members of the PDP in Abia were under investigation for their alleged complicity in the 2015 campaign fund fraud.

"Recovering stolen funds from politically exposed persons is not easy. The people we are dealing with take painstaking efforts to perfect the fraud.

"Some of the money had left the shores of this country and we have written the foreign countries from here," he said.

He also said the Commission has "discovered some of the bogus projects" the 'corrupt' politicians used to corner the stolen funds, assuring that the anti-graft agency will make its findings public in due time.