Emma Ujah
16 April 2009
PRESIDENT Umaru Yar'Adua has bowed to pressure from various interest groups insisting on bringing Nigerians involved in the Halliburton bribery scandal to book, as his administration announced, in Abuja, yesterday, the setting up of a high-powered security investigative committee to look into the matter.
Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Chief Michael Aondoakaa (SAN) told State House Correspondents that he was optimistic about the Mutual Legal Assistance request before the government of the United States on the matter.
The investigative team is headed by the Inspector-General of the Police, Mr. Mike Okiro. Members include the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mrs. Farida Waziri and Directors-General of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and the State Security Service (SSS).
According to a statement by the Special Assistant to the Minister, Mr. Onov Tyuulugh, the investigation committee would be inaugurated by Chief Aondoakaa next Tuesday.
The committee would expand its scope of work beyond the Halliburton bribery scandal to include the Siemens and Wilbros scams.
Earlier in a chat with State House Correspondents, the minister said, "we are going to constitute a joint investigation committee because of its high profile nature and that committee will be charged with the responsibility of internally gathering of information and if the quality of information we receive internally are sufficient for us to commence prosecution we will commence prosecution.
"I am just waiting as you are interviewing me to see the president to submit the request for the committee and we are proposing a joint committee of all the important security agencies, EFCC, SSS, the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and office of the Inspector General of Police (IGP) and they will have one forum, it should not be uncoordinated investigation.
"It is dealing with this case only which is very high profile, but I will seek the mandate to extend the committee to look into the Siemens and Wilbros cases."
There was no indication, however, that the scandals could be dispensed with as quickly as the Nigerian public might expect, as the minister noted that the crimes predated this administration and took even the US government quite a while to get to unravel.
His words: "this request (on the involvement of Nigerians) was just submitted about two weeks ago and what they are talking about relates to crime committed from 1994 that predates this administration. So we have to look at it. It did not take the US government just two months or three months to investigate this matter, it took them up to two to three years to investigate.
It is a high profile crime. Things are structured in Switzerland, things are structured in France, offshore companies are used to route this money. We must have these documents from the US government. If we look at court proceedings supplied us by the US government it is sealed.
"And the first contact with Stanley, he says he is willing to cooperate with the Nigerian government and under the order of the court of the US government. The information is sealed, unless the US government releases it.
There is what is called classified information under the US government where it is forbidden for you to disclose classified information. It is concealed. There, somebody can go to jail for life for disclosing information that is classified", he said.
On how long this process would take, he said "this process depends on the cooperation we have from the US government."
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According to the united states' investigative panel, the Halliburton case involves a series of bribery conducts carried out by the company from 1994. The Switzerland government has agreed that $150 million out of the $180 million was trapped in Zurich, but has failed to tell Nigerians how they came up with such amount - is it cummulative from 1994 - 2003 or just an amount deposited in a particular bribery transaction? Moreover, why haven'nt they(Swis gov.) disclosed the presence of such amount of money in their custody until now. As such, we have every reason to conclude that Swis banks… [Read Full Text]