Six CBN Top Officials, 16 Others To Appear In Court For N8bn Fraud

Six top officials of Central Bank of
Nigeria (CBN) and 16 others from some
commercial banks are to appear before
an Ibadan Federal High court tomorrow
June 2nd over their alleged involvement
in a N8 billion fraud. According to a
statement by the Economic and Financial
Crimes Commission (EFCC), the CBN
officials and their accomplices who are
all currently in the custody of the EFCC,
stole and recirculated defaced and
mutilated naira notes to the tune of N8
billion.
The notes according to the CBN was to be
destroyed due to their bad state.
However instead of destroying the notes,
the CBN officials decided to replace the
mutilated notes with newspaper cutouts
in naira sizes and burnt them,
pretending they had destroyed the
mutilated note. They then returned the
mutilated naira notes into circulation.
The statement from the EFCC after the
cut ..
“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 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. In a statement, the
informant stated that the exercise was
designed to last between August 4 and 8,
2014. The 35-year-old, however, stated
that she discovered a strange ‘sight’
while opening the third box on the second
day of the exercise. It was a discovery
that beat her ken. She added that she
confronted the other members of the
panel, including Eye, Head, Briquetting
Panel; Treasury Assistant; Coordinator
and Head, Security, CBN, Ibadan, who all
assured her that they would look into it.
But she later found out that it was all a
ruse. She said she later found out that
Eye not only maintained sealed lips over
the matter but omitted it from her report.
A five-count charge awaits the suspects.”