CBN: We Will Not Pay; $7bn Forex Claims Riddled With Fraud, Says Cardoso

Yemi Cardoso, Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, says its has discovered fraud in the forex backlog claim by some stakeholders in the economy.

The CBN which said last week that it is making serious efforts to clear the $7 billion forex backlog owed some sectors in the economy said at least $2.4 billion of the said amount have been discovered to be invalid.

The apex bank said recently that it was no longer owing commercial banks and airlines having cleared the backlog with them.

The CBN boss made this known while speaking on Arise Television on Monday, explaining that the revelation was discovered by the consultant appointed by the apex bank to look into issue.

Cardoso stated that it employed prominent financial consultant, Deloitee which discovered serious discrepancies in the forex claims by some stakeholders in various sectors.

According to him, the government reserve bank has been very worried that the forex market has remained unstable, leading to the sliding value of the naira against the dollar despite all efforts being carried out to stabilize the market.

It was Deloitte that discovered that various forex claims were frivolous, which, he said, continues to fuel the depreciation of the national currency against the dollar.

The CBN has decided not to pay the claim “if they are not valid”, Cardoso said today.

Explaining why the CBN took the decision, he said, “Now, as we went along, we now had reasons to believe that we needed to take a harder look at these obligations. So we contracted Deloitte Management Consultants, to do a forensic of all these obligations and to actually tell us what was valid and what was not.

“We were committed to ensuring that we would pay all valid transactions and the result that came out of this was startling.

“We discovered that of the $7 billion, roughly about $2.4 billion had issues and had no business being there, and the infractions on that range from so many things, for example, not having valid important documents, and in some cases, even entities that did not exist, and in some cases, beneficiaries, account parties who had asked for exchange and got more than they asked for and some who didn’t even ask for any, got.

“Well, we’re not paying, if you don’t qualify. They are not valid.

“We have settled about $2.3 billion and that applies to the airlines and a whole load of different entities spread throughout the economy.”