The Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mrs. Farida Waziri, Saturday gave reasons for resorting to plea bargaining in the $182million Halliburton bribery scandal.
She admitted that the anti-graft body adopted this approach because it might be difficult to sustain the charges against ex-US Vice-President, Dick Cheney and other multi-national firms in court.
Waziri said: “We decided to take this option for variety of reasons. One, the plea bargaining is the latest and best world practice that is being done outside of Nigeria.
The US and the UK governments are practicing it. Where you cannot successfully sustain a charge in court and you want to recover, then instead of losing the case, losing the money, then you opt for plea bargaining.” She said over N25billion bribe sums and fines had been recovered so far by the commission.
