The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has reacted to reports that the commission has paid the whistleblower concerning the sum of N13billion recovery from an apartment in Ikoyi, Lagos State, stating that it never said so.

The anti-graft commission in a statement on Friday, November 10, said its Chairman, Ibrahim Magu only said the whistleblower has become a millionaire by his action and more Nigerians should be encouraged to embrace whistleblowing.

“What Magu said at the 7th Session of the Council of State Parties to the United Nations Convention Against Corruption in Vienna, Austria, was that citizens should be encouraged to embrace whistleblowing because of the incentives attached.

“To illustrate this, he stated that the gentleman who provided the information that triggered the huge recovery at Osborne Towers in Ikoyi was already a millionaire based on the incentive in the whistleblower policy where information providers are entitled to between 2.5 and 5% of the recovered sum,” the Commission’s head of media and publicity, Wilson Uwujaren said.

Magu had earlier spoken at the Conference in Vienna, Austria, saying the whistle-blower has become a millionaire by virtue of the percentage he is officially entitled to, after EFCC operatives recovered $43,449,947, £27,800 and N23,218,000 from an apartment located at 16, Osborne Road, Ikoyi in April.

He said, “We are currently working on the young man because this is just a man who has not seen one million Naira of his own before. So he is under counseling on how to make good use of the money and also the security implication. We don’t want anything bad to happen to him after taking delivery of his entitlement. He is national pride.”

Uwujaren said Magu never said that the young man has been paid and that the Commission is not even directly responsible for the payment of rewards to whistleblowers.