Lagos — A Nigerian court seized $21m on Monday from bank accounts linked to a former oil minister accused of corruption as investigators continue to claw back her fortune. Federal high court judge Abdulazeez Anka ordered the immediate forfeiture of 7.6-billion naira ($21m) allegedly held in local bank accounts by Diezani Alison-Madueke, who was once one of Africa’s most prominent female politicians. Nigeria’s anti-graft Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), which accuses Alison-Madueke of corruption, argued in court that she had illicitly laundered the funds with the help of top oil officials. Nigeria’s former central bank governor Lamido Sanusi exposed the gargantuan scale of theft at Nigeria’s state oil company in 2014, it was reported. During a 15-month period, Sanusi identified discrepancies of $20bn between what the state should have been earning and what was remitted into treasury accounts — an amount equivalent to 5% of the country’s gross domestic product, reports...
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