‘Criminally smart’ — Olukoyede says politicians now declaring assets before acquiring them

Ola Olukoyede, chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), has raised the alarm over a new tactic by some politicians to evade anti-graft scrutiny by declaring assets they do not yet own before assuming office.

Speaking at the launch of the virtual tool on the code of conduct for public officers in Abuja on Tuesday, Olukoye described the practice as “anticipatory looting” of government funds by public office holders.

According to Daily Trust, the event was organised by the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) in collaboration with the Technical Unit on Governance and Anti-Corruption Reforms (TUGAR).

The EFCC chairman said investigations have revealed cases where politicians falsify their asset declaration forms by listing properties they intend to acquire while in office.

“There was an investigation we carried out, and we discovered something not too strange, but it proves the ingenuity and the criminally smart way that some of our politically exposed persons carried out some of the nefarious activities we investigated them for,” he said.

He recounted a case where a public officer declared ownership of a multi-billion-naira property before it was built.

“There was a matter we investigated. I told my guys, ‘Just get the CCB form and look at it.” There’s something I’m not comfortable with in this report,” Olukoyede said.

“So, they got the CCB form. We looked at it. We discovered one of the very big properties valued well over N3 billion the person declared in the CCB form.

“We saw that the address that was in the CCB form was different from the one that the person put down, from the particular address where that particular property was located. So, I felt something was amiss.”

The EFCC chairman said further checks showed that the individual had listed a property at No. 39 while the actual mansion was at No. 44.

“So, while we were asking questions, eventually, we discovered what we call anticipatory declaration of assets. And that is the smart way that some of these leaders have resorted to now,” he said.

“Now, they declare what they intend to acquire by the time they are in the office before they are sworn in to the office. It is terrible. We saw that, and we felt, “No, this is pretty bad.”

Olukoyede added that the politician had even registered the property in the land registry before owning it and had designed the mansion he planned to build there.

“Before he was sworn in, he had started thinking about the money to steal and what to do with the money,” he said.