A non-governmental organisation known as Human and Environmental Development Agenda (HEDA Resources Centre) has called for the creation of a new agency to manage and dispose forfeited assets.
In a statement on Tuesday, HEDA said the new agency should have conflicting power of management, freezing, recovery, disposal, seizure, tracing and confiscation powers, similar to existing ACAs and LEAs, inimical to collaboration and efficient management of proceeds of crimes.
Meanwhile, on financial implications for execution of mandate on nationwide and international assets, HEDA maintained that it was potentially impracticable and impossible, considering the inability of the Ministry of Justice to currently fund recovery of assets but rather employing services of external lawyers on no win, no fee basis.
For the agency’s relevance in changing nature and scope of financial crimes and money laundering, the civil group affirmed that the agency would need to conduct its own investigations and prosecution of money laundering, terrorism financing etc and matters concerned.
For response to perishable forfeited assets nationwide, the organization asserted that could be difficult, cumbersome and expensive with a center-dependent bureaucracy with other ACAs and LEAs.
On proper handling of Exhibits at Interim Forfeiture stage, as well as how it might disrupt the fight against graft, HEDA submitted that Handling exhibits could jeopardize a successful prosecution and it would be very disruptive given the controversy surrounding the disposal of the ongoing assets by the AG’s office.
On who are the Proponents and supporters, HEDA again said the Honourable Attorney of the federation (HAGF), finding its compliance with Orasanye’s report and government white paper on not creating new agencies, HEDA opined it contravenes the whole Ideas.
For Accountability/Governance mechanisms, it maintained that there should be a Central DataBase in HAG’s Office and Quarterly Report to NASS Public Accounts Committees.
More so on Accessibility to Forfeitures Records, the anti-corruption CSO suggested that Records domiciled in the Courts/NJC and National Data Base be made open for scrutiny.
On the FATF Recommendation of POCA as captured in the lead debate of POCA Bill, HEDA said, “No agency was recommended while on The Effect of Expunged provisions of other LEAs and ACAs, it pushed for the expungement of relevant provisions in other ACAs and LEAs mandates needing amendment of all the Acts.”