Switzerland agrees to return $380m of Sani Abacha's loot after reaching deal with Nigeria

SWITZERLAND has agreed to return $380m stolen by former military dictator General Sani Abacha to Nigeria after its prosecutors the Nigerian government and general's family reached an agreement.

Under the terms of the deal, the file on the matter, opened by the Geneva public prosecutor’s office since 1999, would be closed. According to the prosecutor’s office, the Abacha clan was thought to have diverted about $5bn from the Nigerian treasury, with much of it ending up abroad.

A prosecutor's office spokesman said: “The $380m in question was seized in Luxembourg in 2006 on the orders of the Geneva justice authorities. The funds were under the control of various companies controlled by the Abacha family, which is considered a criminal organisation.”

According to the prosecutor's office, the repatriation and confiscation of the funds followed the conclusion of an agreement in July 2014 between the federal government and the Abacha family. This, it added, set out the confiscation of the assets and their return to Nigeria, while the federal government would drop its complaint against Abba Abacha, the son of the former ruler.

Nigeria's federal government has been chasing funds looted by the Abacha clan while the military strongman was in power from 1994 to 1998. According to the prosecutor’s office, the confiscation order allows, among other things, that the funds returned to the Federal Republic of Nigeria are monitored by the World Bank and if the monitoring is not effective, the funds will be returned to the Geneva authorities.

Also, the prosecutor's office statement said that the file against Abba Abacha was now closed, based on an article in the penal code, which allowed criminal proceedings to be abandoned once the defendant had made amends as much as was possible. In 2012, after a legal back and forth, the Geneva Police Court gave Abba Abacha a one-year suspended prison sentence for belonging to a criminal organisation.

However, a federal court in Lausanne, Switzerland’s highest instance, quashed the sentence in May 2014. Abba Abacha, who was absent from the court room for the judgement is now a free man under Swiss law.