Round tripping, money laundering: Senate panel recovers N140b

The Senate Joint Committee on Customs, Excise and Tariff and Marine Transport on Wednesday disclosed that the Central Bank of Nigeria is in possession of recovered N140 billion from Chief Executives Officers of companies accused of round tripping and money laundering.
The Senate had mandated its standing committees to carryout holistic investigation into the activities of the Nigerian Customs Service with a view to identifying leakages and irregularities.
In the interim report of the joint committees considered by the Senate, the names of the companies that remitted the money to the CBN were not included.
At the beginning of the consideration of the report, there was chaos on the floor over different names on the report circulated to senators.
Some senators were of the view that the Senate should not consider the report until the issues raised by senators were corrected.
But the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, protected the chairman of the Joint Committee, Senator Hope Uzodinma, from senators grumbling on the report.
Presenting the report, Uzodinma disclosed not fewer that N140 billion was recovered from companies and banks that were involved in round tripping and money laundering.
He added that over 65 per cent of the nation’s forex allocation have no positive impact on the Nigerian economy, but rather engender a thriving money laundering and forex round tripping racket.
Uzodinma said: “As a result of this exercise, some collection banks have made additional remittance to the Central Bank of Nigeria to the tune of N128 billion and evidence of payment and receipt have been received by the committee.
“From selected 60 companies, over N120 billion payments have been made to the government voluntarily by the companies based on their own internal self-audit after receiving documented evidence of their culpability from our committee.
“It is instructive to note that despite all the payments so far made, none of the approved collection banks or selected companies have fully cleared the established liabilities against them.
“From our established records, it is obvious that well over 65 per cent of our forex allocation have no positive impact on the Nigerian economy, but rather engender a thriving money laundering and forex round tripping racket.
“The committee identified a huge mismatch between the actual remittance to the Central Bank and duty, taxes and levies collected by the approved collection banks.
“Evidence of these identified shortfalls has been presented to the commercial banks for their review.”
The committee however demanded for another eight weeks to a thorough work on the report.
The chairman said: “It is our view that within the next eight weeks, the ongoing stages highlighted in the report would have been successfully concluded, thus enabling this committee to deliver a compelling and comprehensive report that will emphatically signpost a departure from the past and bear eloquent testimony to the strides achieved by this present 8th Senate.”
It could be recalled that Senate panel began investigation into the activities of the Nigerian Customs Service with a view to identifying the leakages and irregularities since May 2017.