EFCC Chairman, Ibrahim Lamorde
| credits: File copy
| credits: File copy
the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has said that five top
officials of the Central Bank of Nigeria and 16 others are to be
arraigned for alleged complicity in an N8bn currency fraud on Tuesday
(tomorrow).
The Head of Media and Publicity of the
EFCC, Mr. Wilson Uwujaren, said in an electronic mail on Sunday that the
suspects were to be arraigned for circulating defaced and mutilated
currency notes at the Federal High Court, Ibadan, Oyo State on June 2
(tomorrow).
Uwujaren said that the 16 others
expected to be arraigned alongside the CBN bigwigs were members of staff
of various commercial banks in the country.
He said that the suspects would be arraigned on a five count charge at the high court.
The EFCC spokesperson said that all the
suspects now in the agency’s custody connived to recycle the defaced and
mutilated currencies they were asked to destroy by substituting the
notes with newspapers cuttings in Naira note sizes.
Uwujaren said that the operatives of the
commission got wind of the deal following a petition that N6.5bn was
recycled by a syndicate involving top officials of the CBN in Ibadan,
Oyo State.
He said, “The Economic and Financial
Crime Commission has concluded arrangement to arraign in court, five top
executives of the Central Bank of Nigeria, implicated in a mega scam
involving the theft and recirculation of defaced and mutilated
currencies.
“The suspects drawn from various
business units of the apex bank are to be docked 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. 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 tonnes 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 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.”
It was stated that the suspects were
members of the CBN Briquetting Panel entrusted with the responsibility
of seeing to the destruction of ‘counted and audited dry notes’ returned
to the CBN by depositor banks such as Zenith Bank, FCMB, Wema Bank,
Access Bank, First Bank, Skye Bank, Ecobank and Sterling Bank
He added that a member of the panel
discovered that one of the boxes which were supposed to be filled with
20 bundles of old, mutilated dry N1,000 notes contained newspaper
cuttings in Naira sizes on September 8, 2014.
He said that another fraud to the tune
of N5bn was uncovered on September 22, 2014 as N500 notes to the tune of
N5bn meant for destruction were replaced with newspaper cuttings.
Uwujaren said that the fraud could not
be covered as a member of the Briquetting Panel of the CBN from Osogbo
raised the alarm about the illicit deal.
The member who called attention to the
alleged fraud was said to have confronted the Head of the panel and
other members but was not satisfied by their response.
They were said to have omitted the discovery from her report on the exercise.
Culled from Punch
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