Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Ibrahim Magu has expressed the Commission’s readiness to partner with the Bureau of Public Enterprise, BPE, in ensuring transparency in the dispose of government properties. Magu said this while receiving the Director- General of the Bureau Alex A.Okoh and other management staff of the Bureau who came on a courtesy visit to the EFCC New Headquarters, Jabi, Abuja.
The EFCC boss, also said the Commission is ready to carryout due diligence on any entity who has shown interest in the purchase of government properties in order to prevent corrupt elements from using the privatization process as a means of laundering illegally acquired funds.
“We will be willing to support you against any threat that will discourage investors from coming into the country and in order to achieve this, I think we need to establish a common desk for a seamless synergy. Once again I seize this opportunity to thank the BPE and I’m happy to tell you that the baby you nurtured has now outgrown its parents as the EFCC today can boost of a befitting Head Office complex which was made possible by our determination and support from the current administration.”
Magu thanked the BPE for their support during the evolution of the Commission saying the One Hundred Million Naira received from the BPE as take off support helped the Commission to start its operations. “If we hadn’t gotten that money, we wouldn’t have been able to kick start”, he confessed.
The money, he said, brought some seriousness into EFCC’s operations and “we started arresting those fraudsters who hitherto were seen as ‘untouchable’ moving around with convoys and sirens. Many of them were arrested and jailed and the Commission recovered substantial amounts of money on behalf of so many victims from them which were restituted to the victims.”
Earlier in his remarks, Okoh commended the EFCC for the achievements it has recorded over the years especially in the sanitization of the nation’s economy which he said has increased investors confidence.
The DG who was decorated in the course of the visit by the EFCC Boss as Anti-Corruption Ambassador, said that he was in the Commission to solicits the EFCC’s support in ensuring that the activities of the BPE are better monitored. He further explained that the activities of the Bureau reflect the principles of transparency that the EFCC is known to propagate.
His words, “the EFCC has provided a platform and atmosphere that has enhanced comfort and confidence in the investors of course who we directly deal with on a regular basis the kind of comfort to want to engage and invest in this economy. The BPE is an agency of government that is mandated to provide sector reforms and enterprise reforms as it relates to government and state owned enterprises”, he added.
