EFCC recovers N30bn from suspended accountant general, N50bn still missing

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has recovered over N30bn from Ahmed Idris, suspended accountant-general of the federation (AGF), out of looted N80bn linked to him.

Chairman of the EFCC, Abdulrasheed Bawa, disclosed this on Thursday during a press briefing organised by the presidential communications team at the presidential villa, Abuja.

In May, Idris was arrested in Kano after he failed to respond to invitations by the commission over the allegation of N80bn fraud.

He was suspended indefinitely a few days later “without pay” by Zainab Ahmed, the minister of finance, budget and national planning.

In July, he was arraigned alongside Godfrey Olusegun Akindele and Mohammed Kudu Usman, as well as a firm — Gezawa Commodity Market and Exchange Limited.

The EFCC said Idris and his co-defendants were indicted on 14 counts of stealing and criminal breach of trust to the tune of N109.5bn.

Speaking during the press briefing, Bawa said the commission is independent without anybody influencing its activities.

He said, “EFCC is independent. Nobody is telling us what to do, what to investigate, how to investigate, how to recover or what not to recover.
“Give us intel. We have been asking people to give us intel and we will do it.
“The last major investigation that we did was that we arrested the AGF. Out of that fraudulent activities, EFCC has recovered over N30 billion and we are already prosecuting them.”