By Sunday Isuwa, Abuja
The Special Presidential Investigation Panel for the Recovery of Public Property (SPIP) has recovered N120,598,055.40 from a commercial bank.
The recovered money is the refund of what is owed to the Federal Government, as a result of excess and arbitrary charges imposed by the bank on accounts operated by some government agencies with the said bank before the introduction of Treasury Single Account (TSA).
A statement issued by the Head, Media & Communication, Lucie-Ann Laha, said the affected agencies includes: NNPC, NPA and NIMASA.
According to her, the money has since been paid into the Panel’s TSA Recovery Account domiciled with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
“The same bank has agreed to $18,910.79, about N6. 8 million.
“In line with the Panel’s resolve to ensure that these recoveries do not create panic among bank customers, we again refrain from naming the bank in question,” the panel said.
It would be recalled that the Panel had assigned a team of financial experts, including forensic auditors to investigate the operations of government owned accounts domiciled with commercial banks within the period of 2009-2015. The investigation had revealed some irregularities, including excess and arbitrary charges on those accounts, by many of the banks.
But Laha said following this discoveries, the Panel had issued demand notices to the affected banks, requesting them to refund to government the undue charges.
“SPIP had previously informed Nigerians of an earlier recovery of over N40 million in a similar exercise from another commercial bank. The Panel is pleased to further report that many of the banks are responding favourably, therefore more recoveries are being expected.”
“SPIP remains committed to ensuring that all looted or misappropriated property including money belonging to the Nigerian people are recovered and returned to government, to be deployed for the development of our country,” the statement added.
