• Anti-graft agency abandons seized luxury cars to rust and rot
The luxury cars sparkle in the sun and glimmer in brilliant moonlight every day. Like piles of putrid fat left by the hearth to decay, they cut the portrait of a bulbous heap of steel rotting away in the sun and torrential rain. At first glance, the Rolls Royce Phantoms, Porsches, Ferraris, among other luxury cars cluttering the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) car dump in Abuja, look like used cars put up for sale. But the expensive automobiles are not for sale. Rather they are part of the luxury items and property seized from persons of interest in the EFCC’s anti-corruption campaign. The Capital findings revealed that the vehicles were confiscated from oil magnates, bank chiefs and other individuals currently undergoing investigation by the EFCC for various types of embezzlement and financial fraud.
Many of the cars were allegedly surrendered to the anti-graft agency by its owners in their frantic bid to give up property and account for money looted from state coffers often with the connivance of shady public officers.
As President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption campaign intensifies, the EFCC is set to add more bullet-proof vehicles and expensive, custom built automobiles to the fleet of cars confiscated from subjects of its investigation.
Owners of the seized cars are in the anti-graft agency’s dragnet for alleged money laundering, bribery, advance fee fraud and various other forms of corruption. As you read, the vehicles are caking with dust, cobwebs, bird droppings, and rodent infestation. This is no doubt ironic given the luxurious nests of the vehicles in their former owners’ massive mansions.
Many of the culprits acquired the vehicles for prestige, to boost their social profiles. Others acquired it to tie down capital and many more simply bought it for want of better things to do with money. Some of the owners of the seized vehicles have been visiting the spot where the vehicles are parked to stare wistfully at the machines that erstwhile distinguished them as men of class and stature. Today, those expensive toys they acquired on a whim or out of desperation to be acknowledged as the rich upper class, are rotting away in EFCC custody.
