BEVERLY HILLS, February 13, (THEWILL) – A new panel of operatives has been constituted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC to get to the root of the infamous Halliburton scam where officials of an American company allegedly paid over $180m to senior Nigerian officials, including past heads of state to secure a contract to build the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas plant.
While several foreigners involved in the matter have been prosecuted in their home countries, Nigerian authorities have failed to file charges against the country’s citizens involved in the matter which saw a foreign consortium of companies bribing Nigerian officials with over $180million to win contracts
However, President Muhammadu Buhari has asked the EFCC to restart investigation into the matter, causing the anti-graft agency to reportedly interrogate a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Damian Dodo, over the scam for eight hours last Thursday.
Sources close to the fresh investigation told Premium Times on Friday that Dodo was questioned for his role in an alleged receipt of $26m from Halliburton, along with a former minister and five other Senior Advocates of Nigeria.
It was alleged that Dodo through his firm, DD Dodo and Co. received $4.5m from multinational companies involved in the deal, purportedly as legal fees.
He was also alleged to have withdrawn over $2m cash for purposes investigators believe are unclear, and in flagrant violation of Nigeria’s extant money laundering regulations.
In the United States, Halliburton and its former subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), entered a guilty plea and agreed to pay $579m fine, the largest corruption settlement ever paid by a U.S company in high-level bribery cases involving payments from multinationals to secure contracts in Nigeria and other countries.
The situation is different in Nigeria where charges are yet to be filed against senior government officials alleged to have received over $180m bribe for the firm’s officials.
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