CBN boots out staff fingered in N8bn scam

For their involvement in a currency scam in which defaced and mutilated notes amounting to about N8 billion were recycled into the country’s financial system, about six officials of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) have been either sacked, or suspended depending on their level of involvement.

The apex bank on Monday said in a statement in Abuja stated that some of the middle-level officers among the accused had been summarily dismissed, or placed on indefinite suspension, depending on gravity of their offence.

Director, Corporate Communications Department of the bank, Ibrahim Mu’azu, said in the statement, that “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.

“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.”

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

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