The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) has released its scorecard for 2019 saying it recovered about N77 billion in cash and assets in its anti-corruption fight during the period.
The agency said in its report that the amount was recovered through “operations, interim and final forfeitures on court orders on persons accused of corruption in 2019.”
The report released by spokesperson for the commission, Mrs. Rashidat Okoduwa stated that out of the N77 billion recovered in assets, the commission got a total of N1.2 billion in cash from persons accused of corruption while it recovered about N32 billion in immovable assets such as landed properties, building, and vehicles.
It also stated that N41.98 billion was recovered from registered review on MDA personnel cost expenditure; N1.16 billion cash in treasury single account; N766 million from Constituency Projects Tracking Group (CPTG), and N1.097 billion worth of assets on completed projects on return of contractors to site.
It should be noted that the N100 billion per year allocated constituency projects are majorly sponsored by members of the National Assembly in their various constituencies.
Also in the report, the ICPC received a total of 1,934 petitions during the period in review, while it concluded 580 petitions, of which 83 cases were filed in court, and 25 convictions secured.
Okoduwa explained that “all petitions that come to ICPC are registered and captured, but we found that quite a good number of them do not belong to ICPC jurisdictions, we found out some are better handled by the police, EFCC, or other agencies.”
She added that some of those petitions had been forwarded to other agencies of government.
Okoduwa, explained that the commission had reviewed the total expenditure cost of some MDAs and discovered some excess monies meant for the payment of personnel on credit after it had paid salaries.
According to Premium Times, Okoduwa said the ICPC approached the federal ministry of finance, budget, and planning “to restrain the MDA’s from accessing the money and return it to the treasury, so not to leave these monies to be misappropriated.”
“We found out when we did the review of MDAs which we did last year, we did several over 200 of them.
“We looked at their personnel cost expenditure, and we saw that they paid salaries from January to July, we saw balances with a different amount in credits for those MDAs.
“The ICPC approached the MDAs to question why they had so much left to (in) their credits, it was in doing that we found out that irregularities behind the large credits the MDAs had.
“We then advised the federal government not to release the monies, because if we had not informed the government, the MDAs had the monies in their credit, they can simply apply it as they wished.
“So we told the federal ministry of finance not to release the money and return it to the treasury so as not to leave these monies to be misappropriated,” she said.
She noted that the money was not recovered in cash, “but it is monies we told the government, not to release.”
