The Economic
and Financial Crimes Commission has released a former Secretary to the
Government of the Federation, Anyim Pius Anyim, The PUNCH can confirm.
The EFCC had earlier said it had obtained a warrant to detain Anyim for 30 days.
It was, however, learnt that Anyim was released on Tuesday after
handing over his passport to the EFCC. The former SGF was also
instructed to report to the commission every two weeks and also return
some of the money traced to him.
A source at the EFCC said, “Anyim was released on
administrative bail after he had surrendered his passport. He is
expected to return some money to the EFCC and also report back every two
weeks.”
Anyim is being investigated for allegedly collecting N520m from a
former National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki (retd.), on the eve
of the 2015 presidential election.
He also allegedly awarded contracts worth N13bn to companies he had
interests in. Anyim, who is a former Senate President, is the most
senior former government official under the former President Goodluck
Jonathan’s regime to ever be arrested by the EFCC.
Apart from allegedly receiving funds from Dasuki, the former SGF
was accused of false assets declaration and using proxies and companies
in which he had interest to corner contracts from the ecological funds.
The source said Anyim allegedly awarded contracts to some companies linked to him through which ecological funds were diverted.
The companies include: Foundation Years Limited, Precious
Integrated, Precious Petroleum, Mak & Mak, Chap Construction, Eldyke
Engineering, Pryke Limited, Chipa Nigeria Limited, Prima A11 Limited,
Pima International, Chanto Engineering, Ishiagu Microfinance Bank, Mulak
Ventures, Vitro Engineering and Tip Top Nigeria.
The source added, “Anyim was SGF from May 2011 to May 29, 2015.
During this period, specifically May 2012 to May 2015, the SGF
Ecological Fund Account with the Central Bank of Nigeria received an
inflow of N58,146,983,677.85.
“From this fund, three of the companies linked to Anyim,
Foundation Years, Obis Associate and Eldyke Engineering received
contracts worth over N13bn. Foundation Years alone received a net
payment of N10,308,017,838.85 between 2014 and 2015.
“Curiously, on receiving the fund, Foundation Years and another
Anyim company, Br-Kthru made several transfers to 37 entities. Some of
the organisations and individuals have no nexus at all with ecological
issues. Investigators are probing the reasons behind the wild
disbursement.”