Former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)
Governor SanusiLamido Sanusi (now Emir of Kano Muhammadu Sanusi II)
raised the alarm that there was an estimated $20bn shortfall in oil
revenues due to the treasury from the state oil company which might have
been spent illegally.
In a related development, the Economic
and Financial Crimes Commission( EFCC) has traced the diversion of the
substantial part of the missing $20billion oil cash to the 2015
electioneering campaign of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), The
Nationa News Paper reports
The anti-graft agency discovered how the cash was transferred and wired into secret accounts for political purposes.
It was learnt that the EFCC has made “ appreciable progress” in recovering a huge chunk of the cash.
The EFCC latest discovery is said to be
part of the ongoing “comprehensive” probe of a former Minister of
Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke.
A source close to the investigator,
said: “We have tracked a substantial part of the missing $20billion
about which the former CBN Governor raised the alarm.
“From our findings, the oil money was diverted. We will soon make the details available.
“As for those being invited for
interrogation on campaign funds, we have been able to establish that the
amounts in question were strictly government funds.
“Whatever noise anyone is making is baseless. We are determined to recover these funds from all the beneficiaries.
“Some of the suspects have refunded the cash credited to them and some still have outstanding funds to pay.”
The highly-placed source said the EFCC was not targeting PDP leaders at all.
He said if there is any evidence of
government funds spent on the campaign of other political parties, we
will “investigate too”.
In 2014, Sanusi told members of the Senate Committee on Finance at the National Assembly in Abuja that $20billion was missing.
He said: “It is established that of the
$67 billion crude shipped by the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation
(NNPC), between January 2012 and July 2013, $47 billion was remitted to
the Federation Account.”
“It is now up to NNPC, given all the
issues raised, to produce the proof that the $20billion unremitted
either did not belong to the Federation or was legally and
constitutionally spent.”
Mrs Alison-Madueke denied that $20billion was missing.
She said: “When the former CBN Governor
came up with the allegation that about $49.8bn of crude oil sales
proceeds were not remitted by NNPC, we swung into action with all the
relevant agencies to reconcile the figures.
“When we reconciled the figures down to
$10.8bn and some agencies were having a different figure of $12bn, we
insisted that the reconciliation must continue because there was still
an anomaly; we said we must get down to the bottom of the matter to find
out what is really amiss.
“We appeared before the Senator Makarfi
Commttee to defend ourselves over the fresh allegation of unremitted
$20bn. We put our papers forward. The Makarfi Committee then went
through all the evidence supplied by all the relevant agencies and found
that there was no missing $20billion.
“Despite the fact that the Makarfi
Committee declared that no money was missing, the opposition kept
insisting that $20bn was missing and they were calling us names.”
While receiving APC chieftains from
Adamawa in April 2015, President Muhammadu Buhari promised to probe the
whereabouts of the $20billion.
He said: “Going by the huge sum of money
involved, there was no way an APC-led administration that has the fight
against corrupt practices as a cardinal objective would sit by and
watch some highly placed Nigerians loot the treasury.”
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