Lee Engineering Absolves Self As Senate Goes After N135bn Gas Fund Defaulters

The Senate Committee on Gas Resources probing the N135bn Gas Intervention Fund disturbed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to some oil and gas companies, has threatened to involve the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to recover the funds.

The Committee made the declaration on Thursday when the 15 beneficiary-firms appeared before it to defend the utilisation of the loans.

This is as one of the beneficiaries of the intervention fund, Lee Engineering and Construction Company, insisted it has fulfilled its own part of the bargain and had nothing to hide.

LEADERSHIP recalls that the loan was disbursed under the Nigeria Gas Expansion Program Intervention Fund of the CBN in 2021 to encourage domestic utilisation of gas in the country.

The Senate panel, however, queried the discriminatory disbursement of the funds to the beneficiaries and wondered why some firms collected more than the N10bn credit threshold above others.

Chairman of the Committee, Senator Jarigbe Agom Jarigbe (PDP, Cross River), also lamented that some of the oil and gas firms did utilise the funds for the purpose it was intended for.

The panel, therefore, collected written presentations of the beneficiaries and the locations of their project sites for further verification.

Jarigbe also revealed that the funds released under the gas expansion and intervention fund were inappropriately accessed by some of the beneficiaries.

He said, “The task of the committee is to ensure that the companies actually expended the funds on what they collected it for.

“The observation of the committee is that there are inconsistencies in the process and the committee may not hesitate to involve the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to recover the funds.

“Some of the beneficiaries did not follow the guidelines. For instance, the Ministry of Petroleum Resources is not even aware that the funds had been released.

“The guidelines stated clearly, without ambiguity, that they are supposed to do evaluation at the ministry before the list of the qualified ones would be sent to the CBN for them to access the loans but that was not done properly.

“We have also discovered that some of the companies do not have anything on ground since they got the loan.

“The committee would investigate all the observations and work on them and let Nigerians know the true position of things.”

But, a representative one of the beneficiaries, Lee Engineering and Construction Company, Mathew Agbadon, protested how the Senate Committee put up a public notice inviting them to the investigative hearing, saying the method suggested that they had been indicted, hence the development gave the company a negative publicity.

Agbadon, a legal adviser to Lee Engineering and Construction Company, told the lawmakers that: “There has been a fundamental misconception out there in the public domain that some people just leverage on the CBN money, stole it and went away.

“That is far from the truth. The truth of the matter is that as a beneficiary of that scheme, we had business with the commercial bank.

“The discussion was done at the commercial bank level and due diligence was done and our application was approved.

“Based on the application, we accessed the facility as an organisation. Lee Engineering has been in the oil and gas industry for 32 years with over 4,000 employees.

“This particular project is one of the outfits of Lee Engineering, and it is located in Warri, Delta State.

“If the committee is ready to visit the project today, we are ready for it. It is 90 per cent complete.

“It is billed for commissioning in the first quarter of next year. In fact, we are looking forward to President Bola Tinubu to commission the project being the first of its kind in this part of the world.”

LEADERSHIP reports that the companies summoned and amounts collected include; NIPCO GAS LTD – N25billion, NIPCO PLC – N5billion, HYDE ENERGY LTD – N2billion, LEE ENGINEERING AND CONSTRUCTION COMPANY – N15billion, PINNACLE OIL AND GAS FZE – N10billion, TRANSIT GAS LIMITED – N8billion, ALMALGAMATED OIL COMPANY NIG, LTD (AMOCON) – N5billion, GAS NEXUS LTD – N10billion, FIRST MODULAR GAS SYSTEMS LIMITED – N4.3billion, NOVAGAS LIMITED – N1billion, GREENVILLE LIQUIFIED NATURAL GAS COMPANY – N10billion, AP LPG LIMITED – N8billion, DANGOTE OIL REFINERY – N5billion, DELTA STATE GOVERNMENT – N20billion, and MOB INTEGRATED SERVICES LIMITED – N2.5billion.