{"id":18245,"date":"2019-05-27T09:00:45","date_gmt":"2019-05-27T09:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=18245"},"modified":"2019-05-27T09:00:45","modified_gmt":"2019-05-27T09:00:45","slug":"icpc-recovers-n26bn-in-4-years-chairman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=18245","title":{"rendered":"ICPC recovers N26bn in 4 years \u2013 Chairman \u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Naomi Sharang (NAN)<\/strong>
\nThe Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) said \u00a0it recovered \u00a0N26 billion from 2015 till date from public officials and companies.
\nChairman of the Commission, Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye who disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Sunday, said the recoveries included cash and houses.
\nHe said during the process, monies were traced to houses, \u00a0noting that recently, the commission recovered 32 houses from a civil servant.
\n\u201cThere are situations whereby our efforts lead to recovery of assets, though much has not been done in terms of conviction.
\n\u201cAnti-corruption is not measured only by convictions alone.
\n\u201cIf you look at our law for example, it gives us powers to do enforcement which means we can investigate and prosecute. This is what leads to conviction.
\n\u201cAnd the biggest part of what we are supposed to do is prevention to stop the crime from happening,\u201d the chairman said.
\nOwasanoye said public officers who had embezzled public funds usually did not act alone but in concert with owners of companies.
\n\u201cWhen we are recovering, we can trace to wherever the money is, which sometimes is in the hands of a company.
\n\u201cIf we follow some of the corruption cases very well, we realise that when you find a public officer, very rarely will they put the money in their account.
\n\u201cThey cook up a process where the money is stolen either by awarding contracts to themselves, by claiming Duty Transport Allowance (DTA) which they did not attend and by diverting money from an approved vote to somewhere else.
\n\u201cBut when you are doing recoveries, irrespective of how it was initiated, and you follow it to whoever is holding it to the end point that your investigation can reach.
\n\u201cIt can \u00a0be a company, you can \u00a0trace it to both liquid and hard assets,\u201d the chairman explained.
\nOn alleged level of corruption in Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), Owasanoye said that \u201cnot all the allegations are validated.
\n\u201cThere are a lot of allegations of corruption against agencies that interface with the public.
\n\u201cAnd where these agencies are not organised and coordinated, there will be this allegation of corruption,\u201d he said.
\nReferring to\u00a0 Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD), Owasanoye said that \u201cwe get a lot of allegations that are against the directorate\u2019s personnel who defraud pensioners\u201d.
\n\u201cHowever, some of these allegations are not genuine because some pensioners don\u2019t give details of their information to PTAD.
\n\u201cHowever, that is not to say that sometimes we do not find credibility in some of the allegations.
\n\u201cPeople scam pensioners and pretend they represent PTAD.
\n\u201cThe directorate has come to us to complain and we have designated a liaison person to work with PTAD toward investigating and prosecuting some of these persons,\u201d he said.
\nThe Chairman further said that ICPC and PTAD were collaborating to rid the directorate of scammers.
\n\u201cWe have an officer that is designated, that liaises with PTAD so that PTAD can quickly investigate and put a closure to whatever the issue is and get back to those who have petitioned.
\n\u201cWe are prosecuting quite a number of them,\u201d the chairman said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Naomi Sharang (NAN) The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) said \u00a0it recovered \u00a0N26 billion from 2015 till date from public officials and companies. Chairman of the Commission, Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye who disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Sunday, said the recoveries […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":18246,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}