Geoffrey Onyeama, minister of foreign affairs, says the
government did not know that the US was listening to
the telephone conversations of members of the
Jonathan administration on some “suspicious”
investments made in the country.
In July, an indicting telephone conversation between
Diezani Alison-Madueke, former minister petroleum
resources, and her associates – Kola Aluko and Jide
Omokore – was leaked.
Alison-Madueke was heard chiding Aluko for being too
extravagant and showy, warning that he was
attracting attention and scrutiny.
The US government had seized some pieces of
property linked to Alison-Madueke and her associates
in the country.
Speaking with state house correspondents in Abuja on
Wednesday, Onyeama said the government was
making effort to recover stolen funds stashed away
abroad.
Asked to put a figure to how much has been stolen
from the country, he said: “On the issue of how much
is stolen from the country, it’s an ongoing thing, we
have been discovering all the time because you see
the sophistication that there is today in hiding money
around the world is amazing, even western countries
themselves have a lot of problems and it takes them a
lot of time and they discovered about the Panama
papers, nobody knew about all those funds illegally
stashed until you suddenly have the revelations under
the Panama papers. So it’s really an ongoing thing
and then new ones coming up all the time.
“As you saw recently we never knew about the US
eavesdropping on some telephone conversations of
members of the previous government and private
sectors talking about investments that were made in
the United States, it just suddenly came out like that,
so it’s an ongoing thing.”
TheCable
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