The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is set to charge three former ministers over the Siemens 17.5m euro bribery scam.

The charges against the ex-ministers have been approved by the Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice.

The EFCC’s prosecution team might be led by Godwin Obla, it was learnt yesterday.

The charges against the ex-Ministers might be filed on or before Friday.

A top source in the anti-graft agency, who spoke in confidence, said: “The three ex-ministers will be in the next set of suspects to be charged to court.

“Two of the three ex-Ministers have written to admit that they collected bribe from Siemens to offset medical bills. In fact, one of them owned up to collecting 5,000 euro.

“A former Minister, who collected cash, is still proving difficult in admitting his share. But we are awaiting the Certified True Copy of the judgment of a Munich court where the bribe given to him is stated; the day, the time and who delivered it.

“Besides the ex-ministers, we believe from our investigation that there were more officials that benefited from the largesse that are being shielded.

“So, the EFCC chairman has directed that a comprehensive list of all manifests of flights between Nigeria and Germany be reviewed.

“The manifests being audited are those from 2001 to 2008. We want to uncover more officials that benefited from the bribe.

“From the revelations of some of the suspects, more officials of the Federal Ministry of Communications, Power and Steel, PHCN, NITEL and M-Tel have been implicated.

“It was a sort of bazaar, from which many government officials and their children benefited.”

But, as at press time, the list of the ex-ministers that will face trial was yet to be made public.

Of the over 25 suspects indicted by the EFCC on the bribery scam, five are ex-Ministers. One of them is dead.

The remaining four ex-ministers interacted with are the Deputy National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Mohammed Haliru Bello (a former Minister of Communications); Chief Cornelius Adebayo and Gen. Tajudeen Olanrewaju (ex-ministers of Communication); and a former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Prof. Jibril Aminu.

Both Bello and Aminu maintained their innocence.

Siemens, a German firm, was involved in about 1.3b euro suspicious bribery payments in some countries between 2001 and 2004.

But of the 1.3b euro suspicious payments, 17.5m euro was given as bribe to some Nigerian ministers and government officials during the administration of ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo.

Based on the admission of guilt, Siemens was fined 201m euros ($248m) by a Munich court on October 4, 2007.

Also on April 21, 2010, a Munich court found two former Siemens managers guilty of breach of trust and abetting bribery for their roles in Nigeria.

While Michael Kutschenreuter, a former financial head of its telecoms unit, was placed on probation for two years and fined 160,000 euros ($215,300, a second defendant, the former head of accounting at Siemens’ telecoms unit, was placed on probation for 1-1/2 years and fined 40,000 euro.

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Can't EFCC shut up till they get a job done?