The Financial Regulatory Council of Nigeria has accused the Central Bank of Nigeria of backing StanbicIBTC Holding Limited in its wrong financial presentation.
The FRC, in a memo by its Executive Secretary/Chief Executive Officer, Jim Osayande Obazee, said it had become obvious that the CBN must have approved the financial statement presented to the public by StanbicIBTC for the apex regulatory body to have shown such biased support to the bank.
The nine-page memo, which was dated November 10, 2015, accused the CBN of setting out to embarrass the FRC in support of the StanbicIBTC.
It said the letter by the CBN faulting the suspension of the Chief Executive Officer of StanbicIBTC, Atedo Peterside, and others, including a staff of KPMG, was posted on the internet by the apex banking regulatory body instead of being sent to the FRC.
The FRC said it only received the letter two days after it had gone viral on the social and traditional media.
The memo said: “The CBN issued a letter to our Council and posted it on the internet, claiming the CBN had cleared StanbicIBTC and maligned the FRC. The said letter to our Council, which the news media noted with pride was leaked to them, did not get to our office in Abuja until 6:30pm on Tuesday, 3rd November, 2015.
“I have taken time to outline this sequence of events to you so as to let you know that the CBN has not acted in good faith and that the actions of the CBN were calculated to embarrass the FRC and indeed the Federal Government of Nigeria.”
Among the sequence of event analysed by Obazee were the meetings and bother meetings the CBN and FRC had with the Chief of Staff to the President and among themselves as regulators.
The memo reads in part: “His Excellency, the Chief of Staff to Mr President, met you and I in his office and adviced that we schedule a meeting to come up with a harmonized position as two regulators on the review of the Financial statements of stanbic IBTC for years ended 31 December 2013 and 2014.
“He went further to state that the CBN should be sanctioned if it is discovered that the errors observed in the said financial statements are true because the CBN approved the said financial statements before they were issued.
“At that meeting, you claimed that what the CBN has done since you received the regulatory decision of the FRC was to get an opinion from a consortium of lawyers on the provision of FRC sct 2011. You said your next step was to invite foreign lawyers to review the opinion you received.
“At the end of that meeting, the Chief of Staff directed that:
a. That you should write to the management of Stanbic IBTC, directing them to stop all negative publicity being sponsored against the FRC. He directed you to send a copy of that letter to me. (Up till now, you are yet to send a copy of that letter to me.
b. That a team of CBN should visit Stanbic IBTC to review the records again to know whether the errors were due to oversight or incompetence or compromise
c. That the FRC should secure a written position on d matter from the external auditors of Stanbic IBTC.
d. Finally, that you and I should agree on a date to meet thereafter and review the document received and reached a final decision.”
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