Online news website, Per Second News has retracted a story published on its website where Heritage Bank was fingered as being involved in a N150 million racketeering.

The story had purported employees of the bank and staff of MTN as being instrumental to the swindle of some customers.

The newspaper in a statement said it “has carried out checks on the story and discovered that standard editorial procedures were not followed to verify its authenticity. After making the embarrassing error the headline and content was amended the same day.

“The story was filed by one of our financial correspondent who passed it directly to the IT officer for publication without the consent of any editorial staff. The statement was utterly false. Mr Oyelade Shola-Isaac, 32, Osuolale Hammid, 40, and Akeem Adesina, 33 were never staff of Heritage Bank Plc at any time.

“The correspondent has been fired to serve as a warning that the Per Second News will not tolerate breaches of its editorial integrity.

“We would want to clarify that Heritage Bank staff was never involved in the fraud. Per Second News regrets the damage done to the team by publication of the allegation, and sincerely apologizes to its readers and to the Management of Heritage Bank, employees and customers across the nation,” said the news platform.