‘CBN fired staff involved in N8bn currency scam’

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) says it has dismissed its staff who were involved in the N8bn currency fraud in some of its branches.

This was disclosed in a statement signed Ibrahim Mu’azu, director of Corporate Communications Department.

Mu’azu said some of the middle-level officers among the accused had been summarily dismissed or placed on indefinite suspension, depending on gravity of their offence.

“The Central Bank of Nigeria will like to inform the general public of the chronology of events that led the management of the CBN to hand over some unscrupulous staff to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for prosecution,” he said.

“During a routine internal audit of the bank’s cash destruction activities in September 2014, the CBN Briquetting Panel, comprising senior bank staff from different branches, noticed some anomalies at the Ibadan Branch, and immediately reported this to the bank’s management.

“On further investigation ordered by the governor, it was discovered that a systematic scheme, which has been on for several years, was being run in which mutilated higher denomination notes, originally meant for destruction, were swapped with lower denomination currencies.

“This practice, known as interleafing, basically labels a box with a higher value than its true content.

“As soon as the Bank’s internal investigations concluded beyond reasonable doubt that some wrongdoing had occurred, the affected members of staff, who are middle-level officers were, depending on gravity of offence, either summarily dismissed or immediately placed on indefinite suspension on October 21, 2014, and all handed over to the EFCC for further investigation and prosecution.”

He further added that the bank conducted a nationwide audit of all 37 branches of the CBN following the incident and the outcome of the investigation showed that this was an isolated scheme at the Ibadan Branch.

Mu’azu assured that the apex bank would continue to collaborate with the EFCC to ensure that affected CBN staff, as well as their accomplices in some commercial banks, were brought to justice.

On Sunday, EFCC announced that five top officials of CBN and 16 others, who are members of staff of various commercial banks in the country, are to be arraigned for alleged complicity in an N8bn currency fraud.

According to Wilson Uwujaren, head of Media and Publicity of the EFCC, the suspects will be arraigned for circulating defaced and mutilated currency notes at the Federal High Court, Ibadan, Oyo State on Tuesday, June 2, 2015.