Swiss and Luxembourg Freeze More Nigerian (Abacha) Assets (VA)

On May 8, 2000, the media reported Swiss investigators have found and frozen $630 million in Luxembourg bank accounts connected with the sons of Sani Abacha, former Nigerian head of state. Luxembourg authorities confirmed that the newly discovered money had been deposited in eight bank accounts at the Luxembourg office of M.M. Warburg & Co., a private bank, in the names of Alhaji Sani Mohammed and Abba Mohammed Sani. The two sons of Mr. Abacha, Mohammed and Abba, had used those fictitious names. According to Jean-Paul Frising, the deputy prosecutor in Luxembourg, the documents verifying the accounts have been transmitted to the Nigeria Government, which now must that the money be returned. The Nigerian Government plans to make such requests towards the end of May. The Nigerian Government claims that Sani Abacha, who died in June 1998, embezzled more than $2 billion, much of it through the Nigerian Central Bank, during the five years he was head of state…[more]