Malami denies EFCC allegations, says claims on Abacha loot “baseless, illogical”

By Johnson Arua

Former Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, SAN, has dismissed allegations by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) accusing him of duplicating the recovery process of the $310 million Abacha loot (which later rose to $322.5 million with interest) and engaging in abuse of office and money laundering.

In a formal response issued through his media aide, Mohammed Bello Doka, Malami described the allegations as “baseless, illogical and wholly devoid of substance,” insisting that the facts of the recovery process vindicate him.

Malami, who was invited by the EFCC on November 28, 2025, said the Commission claimed that a Swiss lawyer, Enrico Monfrini, had already completed the recovery of the funds before he assumed office in 2015, and that his own intervention amounted to duplication orchestrated to introduce new lawyers who would allegedly return kickbacks to him.

He said such a claim collapses “when subjected to facts and elementary logic,” noting that there was no record showing that the funds had been lodged into the Federation Account before the Buhari administration initiated fresh recovery efforts in 2016.

According to him, “Recovery of illicit funds can only be said to be completed upon the actual lodgement of recovered funds into the Federation Account. As at 2016, there was no such lodgement. Therefore, there was no completed recovery and nothing to duplicate.”

Malami further revealed that in December 2016, several lawyers, including Monfrini himself, formally applied to be engaged for the recovery of the same funds, a situation he said directly contradicts the claim that Monfrini had already completed the job two years earlier.

In his proposal, Monfrini reportedly demanded a $5 million upfront payment and 40 percent of the recovered sum as success fee, which was later reduced unilaterally to 20 percent. Malami said these terms were rejected in line with the Buhari administration’s guidelines, which pegged success fees at no more than 5 percent and prohibited upfront payments.

A Nigerian law firm was subsequently engaged on a transparent 5 percent all-inclusive fee, a decision Malami said saved the country between 15 percent and 35 percent, or between ₦76.8 billion and ₦179.2 billion at prevailing exchange rates, compared to Monfrini’s conditions.

He insisted that the engagement process was lawful and significantly beneficial to the country, stressing that “any claim or investigation suggesting abuse of office or money laundering in relation to the $322.5 million is not rooted in any reasonable ground for suspicion.”

Malami clarified that there were separate tranches of Abacha loot recovered under his tenure. The $322.5 million repatriated from Switzerland between 2017 and 2018 was deployed through the National Social Investment Programme as Conditional Cash Transfers to the poorest Nigerians, under World Bank-supervised monitoring. Another tranche of about $321 million repatriated from Jersey in 2020, he added, was dedicated to key infrastructure projects, including the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Abuja-Kano Road and the Second Niger Bridge.

He said attempts to conflate these distinct recoveries or portray the process as duplication were misleading and politically motivated.

The former Attorney-General thanked his supporters nationwide for their “unwavering encouragement,” maintaining that he is being targeted for political reasons.

In his words, “The allegations remain baseless, illogical and entirely devoid of substance. I remain confident that truth, law and reason will ultimately prevail.”