The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Olayemi Cardoso has said that law enforcement agencies have begun investigating the foreign exchange backlog claims which the apex bank declared ‘invalid’.
The apex boss said this on Tuesday at the 294th Meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee in Abuja.
On March 20, the apex bank announced payment of $1.5bn as settlement for the balance of the valid foreign exchange backlogs the new governor, Cardoso, inherited when he assumed office last year.
In total, the CBN settled only $3.8bn out of the nearly $7bn forex backlog claims inherited by the governor.
Some of the claims were approved under former CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele.
But the governor who said that he is willing to entertain challenge from any aggrieved party also said law enforcement agencies have begun an investigation into the claims.
The governor said, “Apart from the fact that documentation was not satisfactory, in many cases they were outrightly illegal. The law enforcement agencies of course are now looking into those transactions that are as far as we are concerned not valid to be paid.
“I will emphasize that if there is any information to the contrary, we will in due course consider that. But as today that is exactly where it stands and the law enforcement agencies are taking a very hard look at those transactions.”
Cardoso said the total unverified “Figure is about $2.4bn and as I said there have several cases, quite frankly that is from documentation and no Form M available or cases where allocations were made and no request were asked for or cases were requested were made and no naira was available.”