He said he blew the whistle on it but that it appeared government does not have the will to recover the money from most multinational companies who took the nation’s oil.
He made the disclosure in a speech delivered at the 2nd year submit in the whistleblower policy of the Federal Government held at Abuja.
Falana challenged the Federal Ministry of Finance to proceed to recover the huge funds.
“I can assure the federal government that I do not intend to demand payment of any percentage from the fund to be recovered based on the whistle that I have blown which has been ignored”, he said.
The activist lawyer recalled that two years ago, the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari adopted the Whistleblower policy as a component of the fight against corruption sequel to the deliberate refusal of the national assembly to pass the Whistleblower Bill sponsored by some legislators in 2007.
He noted that like the Treasury Single Account (TSA) and Bank Verification No (BVN) the Whistleblower policy is said to have assisted the federal government to recover huge public fund which had been cornered by a few corrupt individuals and corporate bodies.
Falana remarked that apart from the success recorded so far in the implementation of the TSA, BVN and whistle blower policies, the trillions of Naira which have been saved or recovered by the federal government have not been deployed to arrest the increasing wave of poverty in the land.
He said it was pertinent to point out, on the second anniversary of the whistle blowing policy, that what has been recovered so far is a tip of the iceberg as the Buhari administration has not acted on the information at its disposal in respect of the billions of dollars being withheld from the federation account.
He gave a list of the billions of dollars that are still being withheld from the federation account.
He recalled that on March 8, 2016, he requested the Minister of Finance to embark on urgent and decisive measures to recover not less than $200 billion.
He said the only thing he got from the Finance Minister was a polite response that his request was receiving attention.
He said the detailed information contained in his letter has not been processed either by the federal ministry of finance or federal ministry of justice.
He however noted that his letter generated reactions from some quarters because the letter was widely published in the media, with particular reference to the allegation that the Central Bank of Nigeria gave out a bail out of $7 billion to 14 commercial banks in 2006.
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