President to reveal names of treasury looters April 2016. Says Prosecution Of Oil Thieves May Take Years.

President Muham­madu Buhari has said despite the resolve of his administration to tackle corruption, prosecution of suspected oil thieves and looters of public funds may take years.

The president made this known during his first me­dia chat yesterday. Buhari said the process of pros­ecuting oil thieves and recovering monies stolen from government coffers would require the coop­eration of other countries where the monies are lodged, and this, he said, may take a long time.
According to him, the problem of the Nigerian National Petroleum Cor­poration (NNPC) is the involvement of interna­tional institutions, finan­cial shipping lines and insurance companies in its activities.
He explained that some of the countries in which the monies the govern­ment was trying to re­cover were lodged have their laws, which have to be obeyed.
He said: “Many of these countries have their financial institutions in­volved and because most of these transactions were on paper, it would take some time to get the pro­cess completed. If, for instance, a transaction in­volves half a million tones of Bonny Light or Akwa Ibom crude and it costs about $2 million and the money goes into a certain account rather than the Federal Government ac­count, you would have to ask for the cooperation of those countries involved to give you the shipping documents and even the bank account of the bank in that country before you can even start any pros­ecution in your own coun­try.
“You just have to do it that way because it is what the system of the country, which you require, their cooperation accepts. We cannot do it on our own because we are no lon­ger in the military regime were we do things using military tribunals in the six geo-political zones, where we provide docu­ments and people were jailed.
“I suspect that this pro­cess would take years. As it is, we are appealing to some countries to please, ask their institutions to cooperate with us because Nigeria is virtually on its knees.
“In the process of pros­ecution, we have to know everything about the case of oil theft, like the amount of crude that was lifted, the destination, the form of payment, the agree­ment that was reached and if it was based on an order from the top or not. When you prosecute a suspected oil thief, the person would definitely get the best law­yers to defend himself be­cause he can afford to pay. There is a lot of work to be done as concerns sub­mitting foolproof docu­ments and reciprocal pros­ecution.
“We have to have suf­ficient documents and if possible, know the cur­rency that was used and the shipping line. If it is the central bank, we have to know under which cen­tral bank governor it took place. We would have to find out if the order was issued by the president at that time or whether he used his initiative as the governor to transfer hun­dred of billions of dollars. I think that by the end of the first quarter of 2016, we would have sufficient proof to show Nigerians the efforts that we have made.”