Six central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) officials and 16 others from some commercial banks are to face trial for alleged N8 billion fraud, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) said yesterday. The suspects, the agency alleged, stole and recirculated defaced and mutilated currencies.
A
statement by the Head of Media and Publicity of EFCC, Mr. Wilson Uwujaren,
said: “The suspects drawn from various business units of the apex bank are to
be arraigned by the anti-graft agency before a Federal High Court sitting in
Ibadan, Oyo State, from Tuesday June 2, 2015 to Thursday June 4, 2015. “They
include Patience Okoro Eye (Abuja), Afolabi Olufemi (Lagos), Kolawole Babalola
(Ibadan), Olaniran Muniru Adeola (Ibadan), Fatai Yusuf, Adekunle (Head,
Security, CBN, (Ibadan) and Ilori Adekunle Sunday (Akure).
The
remaining 16 suspects are drawn from various commercial banks who were found to
have conspired with the CBN executives to swing the heist. All the suspects who
are currently in the custody of the EFCC are now ruing the day they literally
allowed greed and craze for materialism to becloud their sense of judgment and
responsibility, when they elected to help themselves to tons of defaced Naira
notes.
“Instead
of carrying out the statutory instruction to destroy the currency, they
substituted it with newspapers neatly cut to Naira sizes and proceeded to
recycle the defaced and mutilated currency. The fraud is partly to blame for
the failure of government monetary policy over the years as currency mop-up
exercises by the apex bank failed to check the inflationary pressure on the
economy.”
The
commission gave further details on how the fraud was perpetrated by the
suspects. The statement added: “The lid on the scam, which is widely suspected
to have gone on unchecked for years, was blown on November 3, 2014 via a
petition to the EFCC alleging that over N6, 575, 549, 370.00 was cornered and
discreetly recycled by light fingered top executives of the CBN at the Ibadan
branch. The suspects, who were members of the Briquetting Panel, plotted their
way to infamy on September 8, 2014 while carrying out a Briquetting exercise at
the CBN Branch, Ibadan.
In
banking parlance, Briquetting is disintegration and destruction of counted and
audited dirty notes. By this practice, depositor banks usually take mutilated
notes to the CBN in exchange for fresh notes equivalent of the amount
deposited. The depositor banks, in this instance, are Zenith Bank, FCMB, Wema
Bank, Access Bank, First Bank, Skye Bank, Ecobank and Sterling Bank. But while
carrying out the assignment, the team was alleged to have found one of the
currency boxes filled only with old newspapers rather than 20 bundles of N1000
notes.
A
similar case, according to investigation, had been discovered on September 22,
2014 when a box that was supposed to contain N500 notes to the tune of
N5billion was filled with old newspapers. Unlike in the past, this fraud could
not be swept under the carpet, as a member of the Briquetting Panel from the
Osogbo branch blew the lid on the illicit deal.
- THE NATION
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks For Visiting My Blog...