International commercial law expert Dr Gbenga Oduntan has been awarded $50,000 from the MacArthur Foundation for a project to run two training workshops in Nigeria on tracing funds transferred as a result of corrupt\u00a0practices.<\/p>\n
The workshops will offer practical strategies on identifying suspect companies and properties as well as whistle blowing techniques. They are expected to be of interest to a broad range of Nigerian government officials, leading journalists, human rights activists, anti-corruption researchers, lawyers, academics, students, NGOs, and the Nigerian Police.<\/p>\n
Led by international academics from Europe and Nigeria, the workshops will address aspects of Nigerian, UK, US and international law on how to research companies and property ownership; using public sources of information; finding shell companies and their investments; and tracing invested funds of former military dictators, former governors and current Politically Exposed Persons.<\/p>\n
Dr Oduntan was invited to bid for the grant, administered jointly by the MacArthur Foundation<\/a> and the Institute of International Education, after running a successful one-day training conference at Kent Law School in July. The conference, entitled \u2018Tracking faulty towers<\/a>\u2019, offered an introduction into strategies and techniques for tracing ownership of companies and properties bought from the proceeds of bribery and corruption in the UK.<\/p>\n Dr Oduntan says the workshops, to be held in Abuja and Lagos, are timely: \u2018Nigeria expects hundreds of millions of pounds of its monies invested in properties and laundered through financial institutions in the UK by Nigerian officials to be returned to the country.\u2019<\/p>\n