Diezani drags EFCC to court seeking an order to stop it from selling off assets seized from her

NIGERIA'S former petroleum minister Diezani Alison-Madueke has dragged the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to court seeking an order restraining it from selling off all the properties that were seized from her.

Since leaving office in 2015 and going into exile in the UK, Ms Alison-Madueke has been the subject of numerous investigations in Nigeria and internationally. She has been asked to forfeit UK properties worth over £11m and has been forced to surrender about N7.6bn ($17.4m) hidden in a Nigerian bank to the government.

In July 2019, Diezani had jewellery worth $40m, including a customised gold iPhone, seized from her after a Lagos federal high court ordered their forfeiture to the federal government. In 2023, Ms Alison-Madueke  was arraigned before the a London high court charged with fresh bribery allegations in addition to the 13-counts bordering on money laundering that she is already facing.

Also, Diezani appeared before the Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London in 2023, over an alleged £100,000 bribe. District judge, Michael Snow, granted her bail for a sum of £70,000 under terms which included an 11 pm to 6 am curfew, an electronic tag to be worn by her at all times and the sum of £70,000 to be paid before she could leave the court building.

In a further twist to the case, last week, Ms Alison-Madueke approached the Federal High Court in Abuja, begging it to stop the EFCC from selling off all the properties seized from her. In the legal action she filed through a team of lawyers led by Chief Mike Ozekhome, Ms Alison-Madueke also asked the court for an order directing the EFCC to retrieve from persons to whom it had sold off any of her properties.

She told the court that the EFCC had, pursuant to a notice it issued in 2023 and acting in breach of her fundamental right to fair hearing, commenced a public sale by auction, assets linked to her. According to the former minister, the anti-graft agency based its decision to sell off the properties on final forfeiture orders it obtained from various courts in the country.

Also, she told the court that despite EFCC’s claim that final order of forfeiture was granted against her seized properties, she was neither served with any charge or proof of evidence in respect of any criminal proceeding, nor summons relating to any matter pending before any court. Ms Alison-Madueke accused the anti-graft agency of obtaining forfeiture orders against her through misrepresentations and the concealment of facts.

Ms Alison-Madueke argued that the said forfeiture orders were made against her by courts that lacked the requisite jurisdiction, saying they were made without recourse to her constitutional right to fair hearing. Insisting she was never served with relevant court processes in all the proceedings that led to the orders for final forfeiture of her assets ms Alison-Madueke said the EFCC was aware that she was not within the shores of Nigeria at all material times as she left to seek medical treatment since 2015.