Money to the value of \u00a3211,000,000 has been seized from a Jersey bank account that belonged to a former dictator.
\nGeneral Sani Abacha was a Nigerian army officer and de facto president between 1993 until his death in 1998.
\nHe laundered money through the US into the Channel Islands and now that money has been recovered. The money was put in accounts held in Jersey by Doraville Properties Corporation, a British Virgin Islands company.
\nThe money is now being held by the government until authorities in Jersey, the US and Nigeria come to an agreement on how it should be distributed.
\nAny money that Jersey does keep will be put into the Criminal Confiscation Fund, which is used to pay for a variety of projects.
\nIn the past the fund has been used for the new police station and developments at La Moye Prison. It is expected that even more money held by Doraville is likely to be seized and paid into the Civil Asset Recovery Fund in the future.
\nHe stashed \u00a3211,000,000 into a bank account in the Channel Islands (Picture: Rex Shutterstock)
\nAttorney General Robert MacRae said: \u2018In restraining the funds at the request of the United States of America, through whose banking system the funds were laundered prior to arriving here, and in achieving the payment of the bulk of the funds into the Civil Asset Recovery Fund, Jersey has once again demonstrated its commitment to tackling international financial crime and money laundering.\u2019
\nIn 2014, at the request of the US authorities, the Island\u2019s Attorney General applied for, and the Royal Court granted, a restraining order over the Jersey bank account balance of Doraville.
\nThe purpose of the restraining order was to preserve the money until a final civil asset recovery order could be registered in the Royal Court.
\nDoraville applied to the Royal Court for the restraint order to be discharged, but the Royal Court dismissed the application in 2016.
\nThen in 2017, Doraville challenged the Royal Court\u2019s decision, taking the case to Jersey\u2019s Court of Appeal. That challenge was again rejected.
\nFinally, following the decision of Jersey\u2019s Court of Appeal, Doraville made an application to appeal against the restraint order before the Privy Council \u2013 Jersey\u2019s ultimate appellate court.
\nIn February 2018 the Privy Council announced its rejection of this final legal challenge.
\nLast week, Solicitor General Mark Temple gave a presentation in Vienna, Austria, about Doraville at a UN conference on corruption.
\nHe said: \u2018The conference of the States Parties to the United Nations convention against corruption is an important international forum concerned with anti-corruption measures and asset returns.
\n\u2018The conference was a good opportunity to demonstrate progress with the Doraville case, as well as Jersey\u2019s determination to deal with international financial crime more generally.\u2019
\nBy www.metro.co.uk<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Money to the value of \u00a3211,000,000 has been seized from a Jersey bank account that belonged to a former dictator. General Sani Abacha was a Nigerian army officer and de facto president between 1993 until his death in 1998. He laundered money through the US into the Channel Islands and now that money has been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":18481,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18479","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=18479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18479\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}