LAGOS, Sept 22 (AFP) - The inquiry into the world's largest
corruption case was stepped up Friday as a Swiss judge
questioned the son of late Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha over the
transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars to Switzerland, officials
said.
   Judge George Zecchin arrived in Nigeria earlier this week and
began questioning Mohammed Abacha on Thursday in the capital
Abuja, Swiss and Nigerian officials said.
   The eldest surviving son of the late Nigerian dictator was flown
to Abuja from Lagos, where he is currently detained on unrelated
murder charges.
   A Nigerian court last month rejected a request from Switzerland
to extradite Abacha to face charges over the alleged illegal
transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars to Switzerland by the
regime.
   Authorities in Switzerland last year froze some 650 million
dollars in accounts linked to the former dictator.
   Authorities in Luxembourg have frozen another 690 million euros
(around 600 million dollars) while authorities in Liechtenstein
froze around 100 million dollars.
   The Nigerian government has estimated that a total of around
four billion dollars disappeared from public funds under the Abacha
regime of which around three billion was sent abroad.
   The inquiry into the missing Abacha millions is the largest in
the world, larger even than the inquiry into the corruption scandals
around late Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko or former Philippine
dictator Ferdinand Marcos, officials here say.
   The Nigerian government has set up its own inquiry which is
co-operating with the Swiss and other authorities in tracking down
funds stored abroad by Abacha and his associates.
   The late military ruler ran Nigeria from November 1993 until his
death in June 1998 and, according to the new Nigerian government,
plundered the national coffers during his time in power.
   Swiss authorities are concerned to protect the image of the
Swiss banking system, particularly after a damning report issued
by Swiss bank regulators earlier this month on the Abacha affair.
   The Roman Catholic church in Nigeria on Thursday said many
Western banks were guilty of co-operating with corrupt government
officials who plunder their countries' resources.
   "We call on Western financial institutions to stop the corrupt
practice of cooperating with fraudulent public servants who loot
public coffers by accepting stolen money for safekeeping in their
banks," church leader Reverend Father Matthew Kukah told a
press conference.
   Despite the action taken in Switzerland, Luxembourg and
Liechtenstein, authorities have yet to freeze accounts in Britain,
France and other countries where Abacha associates and others
are believed to have stored stolen public funds.
   British and other European countries have called on the Nigerian
government itself to initiate criminal charges against the Abacha
associates before they freeze any accounts.
   Critics of President Olusegun Obasanjo, who came to power last

year, have accused him of soft-peddling on the Abacha inquiry and
refusing to investigation claims of even larger corruption under
Abacha's predecessor Ibrahim Babangida.
   Babangida, who ran Nigeria from August 1985 to August 1993,
was  reported last year to have partly funded Obasanjo's election
campaign.

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