Top officials of the Nigeria Central Bank,
CBN, colluded with officials of private
banks to defraud the country of about N8
billion, an anti-graft agency has said.
The EFCC said on Sunday that it is ready to
prosecute Patience Okoro Eye, Afolabi
Olufemi, Kolawole Babalola, Olaniran
Muniru Adeola, Fatai Yusuf Adekunle, and
Ilori Adekunle Sunday, all top officials of
the Central Bank from various states, after
concluding its investigations.
Officials of private banks who colluded with
the Central Bank officials will also be
prosecuted, the EFCC spokesperson, Wilson
Uwujaren, stated in a statement.
The scam involved the “theft and
recirculation of defaced and mutilated
currencies,” the anti-graft agency stated.The
officials are set to be arraigned on Tuesday.
Read the full statement below:
EFCC To Arraign Six CBN Big Wigs,16
Others for N8billion Currency Fraud June 2
The Economic and Financial Crime
Commission, EFCC has concluded
arrangement to arraign in court, five top
executives of the Central Bank of Nigeria,
CBN, 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.
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 sixteen 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 be loud their sense of
judgement and responsibility, when they
elected to help themselves to tones 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( Six Billion, Five Hundred
and Seventy-Five Million, Five-Hundred and
Forty-Nine Thousand, Three Hundred and
Seventy Naira) was cornered and discreetly
recycled by light manipulated 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 were 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 as
they prepare to face the wrath of the law.

hnmnnnnn

Na wa o. Why efcc no arrest dem since, y now

many of us will do more than these criminal if we have the chance.