THE Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on Tuesday has again returned over N263 million looted funds to the Kwara state government.

In a press statement signed by EFCC, the money handed over to Abdulrahaman Abdul-Razak, governor of the state at the anti-graft zonal office Ilorin was recovered from suspected looters of the state’s treasury following thorough findings.

Isyaku Sharu, Head of the EFCC Zone, in the state, said: “The money was siphoned from KWIRS and 16 Local Government Areas of the state.”

“We have 48 convictions and the worth of recovered assets, both at interim and final forfeiture is in excess of N8.5 billion.

“The mandate given to the commission is to conduct holistic and all-inclusive clean up of fraud and pen robbery, and we will not relent in doing this,” Sharu said.

He disclosed that about N5 billion was siphoned from KWIRS and shared in the ratio of 30/70 percent by some notable individuals in the state through their cronies.

In October last year, the Ilorin Zonal Office had handed over a sum of N112million cash recovered from thieves who looted the state treasury.

Abdul-Razak who bemoaned the corruption in the state revealed that the sum of N2billion borrowed by the previous administration from the Federal Government to implement SME programmes was not accounted for, as most of it was stolen.

He, however, said the just recovered funds would be used “ To augment the budget, social development, and the remaining will be used for paying state government debt to the federal government on the SME programme.”