The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, has denied paying the whistleblower that led its operatives to the recovery of more than $43million in an apartment in Osborne, Ikoyi Lagos.
News reports had quoted the commission’s acting acting chairman, Ibrahim Magu that the person has been paid.
A lawyer of the unnamed whistleblower, Yakubu Galadim, granted an exclusive interview to an online newspaper refuting the claim and demanding that his client be paid. This revelation led to intense backlash on the anti-graft commission.
Galadim also revealed that the EFCC branded his client as a lunatic and he has had to write to President Muhammadu Buhari demanding that his client be paid his entitlement which is rightly N850 million.
But the commission’s spokesman, Wilson Uwujaren said on Friday, November 10, 2017 the payment has not been made.
“What Magu said at the 7th Session of the Council of State Parties to the United Nations Convention Against Corruption in Vienna, Austria, was that citizens should be encouraged to embrace whistle blowing because of the incentives attached,” Uwujaren said.
“To illustrate this, he stated that the the gentleman who provided the information that triggered the huge recovery at Osborne Towers in Ikoyi was already a millionaire based on the incentive in the whistle blower policy where information providers are entitled to between 2.5 and 5 % of the recovered sum”, Uwujaren clarified.
Uwujaren further said: “We are currently working on the young man because this is just a man who has not seen one million Naira of his own before. So he is under counselling on how to make good use of the money and also the security implication. We don’t want anything bad to happen to him after taking delivery of his entitlement. He is national pride”.
“Magu never said that the young man has been paid. The commission is not even directly responsible for the payment of rewards to whistleblowers.
“There is also no controversy about the exact amount recovered in the operation which was streamed live, the first of its kind, and witnessed by the whistleblower, security at the Towers and representative of the Agency which claimed ownership of the money”
