EFCC to Arraign 6 CBN Big Wigs,16 Others for Alleged N8bn Currency Fraud?

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The Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) has concluded its arrangement to arraign  five top executives of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, implicated in a mega scam involving the theft and re-circulation 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 June 2, 2015 to Thursday June 4, 2015.

They are 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).

According to EFCC Head of Media and Publicity, Wilson Uwujaren said: "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. Instead 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."

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Uwujaren explained that "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."

He said: "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, 575, 549, 370.00( Six Billion, Five Hundred and Seventy-Five Million, Five-Hundred and Forty-Nine Thousand, Three Hundred and Seventy Naira) was cornered and discreetly recycled by light fingered top executives of the CBN at the Ibadan branch.