For hoarding naira, the ICPC conducts bank raids and detains officials.

On Friday, operatives of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission found N258 million hidden in the vault at the Abuja offices of the Sterling bank.

The finding was made during an operation by the commission to make sure that commercial banks follow the Central Bank of Nigeria’s regulations on the distribution of new naira notes to clients.

In a statement acquired by The PUNCH on Tuesday, Mrs. Azuka Ogugua, the anti-graft agency’s spokesman, said this.

Ogugua said that the ICPC monitoring team was informed that the money was the leftover from what the CBN had given the bank for distribution to its branches when it visited the bank and found the stored fresh naira notes in the bank’s vault.

“The team discovered, however, that just N5m per person was given to their different branches,” she said. While the inquiry is ongoing, both the regional and service managers were detained and eventually released on administrative bail.

Similar to this, the commission detained the Keystone Bank’s head of operations in Mararaba, Nasarawa State, for obstructing the distribution of the new notes to the bank’s clients.

While doing ordinary business, the ICPC team discovered that only N1000 notes were being accessed by other bank clients and that the branch’s automated teller machines were not issuing cash to its customers.

Ogugua said, “The ATMs resumed distributing N5000 to non-customers and N10,000 to its clients only after the arrest was made and confirmation obtained from CBN that the stance of the bank’s officials was not right.”

A security guard employed by Zenith Bank, 3rd Avenue Gwarimpa, named Abdulkareem Shaibu, along with Ali Adam and Shafiu Umar, was also detained by the squad.

Miniechat

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