Six CBN Top Officials, 16 Others Commercial Bank Staffers Charged And Will Appear In Court For N8bn Fraud

Six top officials of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and 16 other bankers from various commercial banks in Nigeria have been charged in an Ibadan Federal High court and will appear tomorrow June 2nd to answer questions about what they knew and their involvements in the N8 billion fraud that was brought to light by a whistle blower in September 2014. 

The officer were said to be in the business of stealing mutilated notes that were meant to be burnt, by replacing them with well cutouts to size newspapers and then burnt the later in place of the mutilated notes and will then reintroduce the mutilated notes back into circulation with the help of the 16 commercial bank staffers.
Read the EFCC statement below;........

“The suspects drawn from variousBUSINESS 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 theCURRENCY, 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.”

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