THE Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mrs. Farida Waziri, Saturday gave reasons for resorting to plea bargaining in the $182million Halliburton bribery scandal.
She admitted that the anti-graft body adopted this approach because it might be difficult to sustain the charges against ex-US Vice-President, Dick Cheney and other multi-national firms in court.
Waziri said: “We decided to take this option for variety of reasons. One, the plea bargaining is the latest and best world practice that is being done outside of Nigeria.
The US and the UK governments are practicing it. Where you cannot successfully sustain a charge in court and you want to recover, then instead of losing the case, losing the money, then you opt for plea bargaining.” She said over N25billion bribe sums and fines had been recovered so far by the commission.
She also said the country’s “slow|” judicial system was another factor that necessitated plea bargain in the Halliburton matter and other high-profile bribery cases involving foreign firms.
According to her, “We did this because of our nature of judicial system, it’s very slow and you know, it is said that justice delayed is justice denied and so we opted for this.” She blamed the slow pace of the trial of politically exposed persons and other celebrated cases on the judiciary, and argued that the best way to accelerate the fight against corruption in Nigeria is by creating a special court for the trial of looters of the public treasury.
Waziri, who spoke with some senior journalists in Abuja, gave an additional reason for plea bargain, saying, “Lastly, we also want to put a stop to this negative attitude of foreign investors in Nigeria coming to take our laws for granted. What they can’t do in their country and get away with it, they come here and do it with impunity.
“We have the procurement Act. If you want to do business in Nigeria, you all have to enquire, even from their embassies that this is how it is done. But because the impression, or the perception is that Nigeria is so corrupt and that everybody is corrupt, there is no exception, they come in here and then resort to corrupting individuals and corrupting institutions. Contracts are done haphazardly.
“These so-called bribes that they give out, they give it out and they add the bribe sum on the contract value, thereby inflating the contract. At the end, the contracts are not properly executed, they are haphazardly done. We end up losing our money, but most of all; we end up losing our good name.”
On recovery of N25billion bribe sums and fines paid back by Halliburton and other multinational firms, the EFCC boss said, “It’s not just Halliburton but there are others. I think I have to give you a rundown of what was recovered, the whole figures and everything else that was involved and why we decided to take that option instead of outright court trials.
“We had the 17.5million euro Siemens bribery scandal. Five officials of Siemens were charged to Abuja High Court on a 35-count case of conspiracy, bribery of government officials and the charges arose from cases of bribery of Nigerian public officers amounting to approximately 10 million euros in order to secure telecommunications contract in Nigeria. So in the process, Siemens paid a total of N6, 052,270 000billion as fines.
“So in summary, the recovered sums from these cases are: Julius Berger ($26million); Snamprogetti (SAIPEM)-$30million; Halliburton ($32.5million). Technip ($30million); Shell ($9milion) and Siemens ($40, 619,261.74). Grand total in USD is $168,119,261.74million. In terms of Naira value is N25, 049,770,000billion.”
On whether the money recovered by EFCC was a pittance compared with fines paid by the indicted firms to the Securities and Exchange Commission in the US, she responded, “You see, we are doing this for the first time. It will get better.
These things (malpractice) have been hanging, and no one was courageous enough to even touch it. A bird in hand they say is worth two in the bush. We better get something out of it than nothing at all. So we negotiated and got some of the bribe sums back. Don’t forget that the actual culprits had left the country so we had to negotiate.”
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