Malami faults EFCC allegations over Abacha $490m loot probe

By : Tunde Omolehin

Date: 1 December 2025 11:21am WAT

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Abubakar Malami, AGF

Abubakar Malami, AGF

Former Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, SAN, has dismissed allegations by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) that he duplicated the recovery process for the $310 million Abacha loot, which later rose to $322.5 million with interest.

In a statement signed by his media aide, Mohammed Doka, Malami described the EFCC’s claims as baseless, illogical, and devoid of substance, insisting that the accusations collapse under factual scrutiny.

He explained that the EFCC alleged he duplicated a recovery process supposedly completed by Swiss lawyer, Enrico Monfrini, before he assumed office.

According to him, the claim is unfounded because no such recovery had been completed before his appointment in 2015.

Malami said that a recovery can only be considered complete when funds are lodged into the Federation Account, adding that no such lodgement existed as of 2016.

“As at 2016, there was no lodgement of any such funds into the Federation Account. There was therefore no completed recovery in existence, and nothing whatsoever to duplicate,” he said.

He further revealed that Monfrini himself applied in December 2016 to be re-engaged for the same recovery effort, which he described as clear evidence that the EFCC’s narrative contradicts itself.

“It is entirely illogical for a lawyer to apply in December 2016 to be engaged to recover funds he purportedly recovered two years earlier. That singular fact exposes the internal contradiction and absurdity of the EFCC’s narrative,” he stated.

Malami added that Monfrini demanded a $5 million upfront deposit and a success fee of 40 percent, later reduced to 20 percent, terms which the Buhari administration rejected. Instead, a Nigerian law firm was hired on a 5 percent success-fee arrangement, which he said saved the country between 15 and 35 percent of the recovered funds, amounting to between ₦76.8 billion and ₦179.2 billion.

He also clarified that he oversaw several distinct tranches of Abacha loot recovery, including $322.5 million from Switzerland between 2017 and 2018, which was deployed to Conditional Cash Transfers under a World Bank-monitored framework, and about $321 million from Jersey in 2020, which was committed to major infrastructure projects such as the Lagos–Ibadan Expressway, Abuja–Kano Road, and the Second Niger Bridge.

Malami maintained that efforts to conflate the different recoveries or portray a lawful, cost-saving process as duplication were misleading.

He stressed that all actions taken during his tenure aligned with the constitutional powers of the Attorney-General and were executed in the public interest. He said any claims suggesting abuse of office or money laundering lack reasonable basis.

Malami described the EFCC probe as a political witch-hunt and thanked his supporters for standing by him.

The former minister confirmed that he honoured an EFCC invitation on November 28, 2025, which he described as a fruitful engagement, expressing confidence that the investigation would vindicate him.

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