A sober Sanusi instead said $12
billion and not $49.8billion was the amount discovered not to have been
remitted to the account within the period.
He consequently said he regretted
that his communication to the president was leaked to the public.
Sanusi, who stated this when he
appeared before the Senate Committee on Finance, to give insight into the
letter he wrote to the president on the controversial missing money, said the
letter did not indicate that the CBN had concluded its investigation on
the matter.
But the Minister of Finance and
Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Mrs Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, faulted the CBN
Governor’s position, saying: “I just wanted to add that we found about $10.8
billion. He mentioned $12billion.”
However, the CBN governor insisted
that his letter was meant for the president to launch an investigation into the
issue.
“I repeat, Mr Chairman, that we did
not see the letter as a conclusion of our investigation but an invitation to
investigate. So, the conclusion that $49.8billion was missing was wrong even
though we had the allegation that it was unremitted.
“Now, since then, a lot has
happened. We have heard the Minister of Finance, Minister of Petroleum
Resources, Central Bank, FIRS, CPR, we have set up technical team and
have started a process of reconciliation and there has been a lot of progress
in that process.
“I found it very unfortunate it was
leaked to the press and the answer is ‘yes’, the CBN Governor did send that
letter with those contents. By way of those contents, the Central Bank and
Finance Ministry and the government were very much concerned over the years at
the very low rate of accretion to the reserves in spite of very high level of
oil prices and in particular, depletion of excess crude account in spite of
what seems to be very high level of oil sales.
“Now, in investigation and trying to
understand where those leakages were, our attention was drawn to a huge
difference between what appeared to be export of crude made by NNPC and amount
repatriated into the crude equity account of the Federal Government.
“The numbers were about $65billion
exported by NNPC and about $15billion repatriated to Federation Account out of
that. Now, in view with our duty as the banker of the government, we had the
responsibility of alerting the president and request a thorough investigation
of this matter,” he said.
He further explained that “the major
progress has been the provision of Monetary Policy Committee, MPC, by the MPC
documents to show that even though they did ship that amount in question which
is a little more $67 billion, about $24billion was actually not their crude but
crude shipped on behalf of third parties like oil companies, tax in crude and
also for third party financing and so, that already addresses half of the
amount.
“So, the second half is the issues
around domestic crude lifting of $28billion from which we feel there is a short
fall, there is a general consensus among us on this even though the amount has
been disputed. For us in Central Bank, there is a shortfall of $12billion,” he
disclosed.
But even with the amount, he said
the CBN was still in the process of reconciling the amount.
“Now, we still are in the process of
trying to reconcile that number and we have not even started talking of the
sales, the export sales tax, which is about $2billion, which will come after
the sales. The Finance Ministry has told us that even before now, there is
ongoing negotiation and discretion with NNPC ad-hoc committee and these numbers
have always been discussed at the level of Commissions of Finance.
“Since the objective of this
committee and for all of us on this side is actually to get to the bottom of it
and find out exactly what is the amount unremitted and what is to be done and
recommend actions.”
He pleaded for time so that the CBN,
NNPC and all relevant agencies come up with a collective figure.
“What I would like to do is, given
the progress we have made, to request that we be given little more time to
continue with this process and come back with the final position that is a
common position among us if the committee will so grant us, ”he added
He was subsequently granted the
request.
Speaking at the event earlier,
Senate President, David Mark,noted that the controversial amount was still
allegation but stressed that it was a serious one.
“At this point what we have is
allegations but it’s a serious allegation. When Senator Adetumbi raised the
point of order, I did not allow comment on the issue.
“It’s for us to get facts so that
when we come back we can make useful and meaningful contributions. The Senate
has no positions on it, nobody knows apart from what was published in the
papers, that’s why we want the committee to establish the facts, the committee,
your body language and utterances must be seen to be totally neutral because we
have no facts, we have no position on it, we urge you to observe the facts,” he
said.
Source: The Will
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