The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) has reclaimed almost 300 properties from two civil servants in Abuja.
Professor Bolaji Owasanoye, the Chairman of the ICPC, made the announcement on Thursday and went on to explain how real estate is frequently used as a cover for money laundering and illicit financial flows (IFFs).
Public authorities utilize real estate developers as conduits for IFFs, according to Owasanoye, who addressed during a public hearing on real estate held by the House of Representatives Ad-Hoc Committee on Investigation of Operations of Real Estate Developers in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
He said: “Corrupt public officers use real estate investment as a vehicle for hiding ill-gotten wealth and money laundering. Public officers acquire estates in pseudo names to conceal the illegal origin of funds.
“This is made possible by the absence of proper documentation and registration of titles to lands and estates in the country and non-enforcement of beneficial ownership standards.”
“The Commission has a case in which we recovered 241 houses from a public officer and another one with 60 buildings on a large expanse of land,” he added.
“Corruption in real estate aids illicit financial flows. The real estate sector is globally recognized as attractive to IFFs largely because it is informal, unregulated, and thus open to abuse, shell-companies, use of intermediaries and third parties to acquire high-value real estate with proceeds of crime and/or illicit funds,” the ICPC boss further explained.
The ICPC leader informed the committee about measures to clean up the real estate sector, which had resulted in the government recovering funds and properties.
He said: “ICPC continued with an exercise started by the defunct SPIP and concluded it from which recovery of a total sum of N53,968,158,974.64 was made.
“The figure comprises of N858,938,681,681.06 fully recovered and paid into FMBN account; N1,357,490,846.28 post-dated cheque for October 2021 and a notarized agreement to pay the sum of N51,751,729,447.30 to the FMBN, “Owasanoye explained.
Owasanoye went on to say that anomalies such as forgery and cloning of land papers, double/multiple land allocations, land allocations without the minister’s consent, and revocation of land titles without proper procedure have grown rampant.
Even real estate developers, he observed, were not immune to the sector’s problems, which included high home acquisition costs, an unstable capital market, currency volatility, increased rural-to-urban migration, ineffective property protection laws, perceived multiple taxation, and poor building quality.
While some of these real estate concerns may be addressed by legislative and executive laws and policies, others are solely dependent on the interaction of economic forces, he added.
