The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has announced the discovery of $2.4 billion in foreign exchange (FX) backlog claims that have been deemed invalid following a forensic audit. CBN Governor, Olayemi Cardoso revealed this information during an interview with Arise Television on Monday.
According to Cardoso, “the audit, conducted by Deloitte, exposed irregularities in the documentation and qualifications of entities making claims for a portion of the backlog. The apex bank identified significant issues with a substantial number of these claims, which were found to be invalid due to various irregularities such as missing import documents, non-existent entities, and inflated requests.
“We engaged Deloitte Management Consultant to conduct a forensic audit of all these obligations and determine what was valid and what was not. We were committed to ensuring that we would pay all valid transactions,” Cardoso explained.
The results of the audit were quite startling, with $2.4 billion out of the initial $7 billion headline figure being identified as invalid. The infractions included cases of missing import documents, non-existent entities, beneficiaries and account parties receiving more than they requested, and instances of funds being allocated to individuals or entities that did not even make any requests.
As a result of these infractions, the CBN will not be honouring these invalid claims, as the bank remains committed to settling only verified transactions. The audit confirmed $4.6 billion in legitimate claims, of which $2.3 billion has already been settled. The remaining $2.2 billion will be addressed in the near future, according to Cardoso.
“We will not pay if you do not meet the qualifying criteria. These claims are not validly constituted requests. As for the validly constituted ones, we have already settled about $2.3 billion, which includes payments to airlines and various entities across our economy,” Cardoso stated.
Via Guardian Newspaper.