The Swiss Government has said it will return the sum of 321 million dollar looted by late and former Military President General Sani Abacha.
This was disclosed by Eric Mayoraz, the Switzerland ambassador to Nigeria after the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters in Abuja on Friday.
He said: “The Abacha loot is a very active dossier that we are dealing with now. We have repatriated 722 million dollars in 2005 to Nigeria and we are now in the process of repatriating 321 million dollars from the second batch of Abacha funds that we have collected.
“Today, the signing of the MoU is for the future cases so it will allow better cooperation. It will reduce time for the process of transmitting the legal requests from Nigeria to Switzerland and vice versa because MoU we signed is not only for looted assets, it is for all criminal matters”.
Earlier in his comments, the envoy said that the signing was aimed at fostering understanding of the legal systems and improving the judicial cooperation of both parties.
He added that the signing of the MoU formalised the commitments of both countries to fighting international crime.
“There is a common ground; this is now a legal tool. If we will each do our share of the work, we will reach our goal; it will in the future be harder to profit from corruption and I am very proud of that”.
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