The Nigerian police, Thursday, said they recovered $470.5 million (N170 billion) in state oil company funds that had been syphoned off into private bank accounts.
Police said they discovered the money linked to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation’s (NNPC) Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) business unit during a nationwide exercise to recover stolen funds.
A total of “$470,519,889.10 belonging to NNPC Brass/LNG Investment hidden in some commercial banks after the directives of the federal government on Treasure Single Account,” police spokesman, Jimoh Moshood, told Reuters news agency in an emailed statement on Thursday evening.
President Muhammadu Buhari, who won the 2015 election campaigning on anti-corruption, had ordered government revenues to be placed in a Treasury Single Account (TSA) at the central bank as part of an anti-corruption drive.
Money recovered from suspected graft was also to be put in the account.
This came moments after an Italian court sentenced two men to four years in prison in the first ruling of a corruption case involving oil giants Eni and Shell in Nigeria.
The main trial of Eni and Shell for corruption started in Milan in the spring, and both oil companies deny the charges.
Italian magistrates suspect the two oil groups used bribes to obtain rights in 2011 to OPL245, an offshore oil block estimated to hold 9 billion barrels of crude oil, for $1.3 billion.
Of that number, $1,092 billion is believed to represent bribes paid to a London bank account that were redirected to various Nigerian politicians, including former oil minister Dan Etete.
The Nigerian government received only $210 million.
