CBN executives to be arraigned for mega scam

CBN executives to be arraigned for mega scam

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The Economic and Financial Crime

Commission (EFCC) will on Tuesday arraign

some 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 to

Thursday.

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 judgment

and responsibility, when they elected to help

themselves to tones of defaced Naira notes.

It is alleged instaed 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, 5 billion 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.