The Nigeria police has accused Sterling Bank of alleged money laundering, fraudulent deductions and other financial crimes by its staff.
This was contained in the report presented by Nigeria Police Force to the House of Representative Committee on Public Petition during the hearing of a petition by Miden Systems Ltd against Sterling Bank, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and Shell Petroleum on Tuesday in Abuja.
Miden System Ltd., had witten a petition to the Committee on the alleged mismanagement, fraudulent debit, and misappropriation of funds from its account domiciled with Sterling bank.
Presenting the report before the committee, representative of the Inspector General of Police, Kabiru Yahaya and Sunny Amison, both Chief Superintendent of Police said after intensive investigation and arrest made on the matter, the bank was found wanting.
“We need to understand it was restructured in 2017, with capital and interest to arrive at US$30 million.
“Having regard to the account, we, a team of detectives, started seeing debits, debits from Miden System account for loan repayment. And we took it upon ourselves to ask the account officer that first came before us to explain the loan repayment but he said it was a mere narration adopted while applying funds to the company’s loan account.
“We found this very vague and ambiguous.
“We discovered that about US$28.3 million was debited from this company’s account for loan repayment but there’s no explanation.
“Particularly, on the 29th, September 2016, the sum of US$2,413,000 was debited from the company’s account. Account number 00148517716 for loan repayment with reference FT16271UZYO. On 14th, November 2016, the sum of US$1.256 million was equally debited from this same account for loan repayment.
“While on the 16th of January 2017, the sum of US$28,302,140.59 was debited from the company’s account for loan repayment. And like I said, we’ve waited for the bank to provide account officers who have managed this account to throw more light on this. It is not our document.
“It is their own document. The facts are before them. If somebody has managed that account before and is no longer an account officer, they could call them, provide names since they are no longer in the bank.
“One of the account officers specifically wrote that the outstanding balance was about US$27.25 million, while the executive director gave us a figure of over US$30 million. That is to say, nothing has been paid, nothing has been debited to clear the loan.
“We equally discovered what the bank captured in the statement of account, in-branch transfer, account to account. And we asked, what does the bank or the account officers mean by in-branch transfer, account to account?
“We have come up with the recommendation that, since the bank has failed to provide evidence for itself to debunk the allegation raised by Miden Systems , evidence as used so far from their own statement of account corroborates the offences alleged. Financial mismanagement, Fraudulent debit, misappropriation of funds and more importantly, when funds are being moved that way, if you go deeper, money laundering. We could not even go deeply towards the petitioner raising their petition”, he stated.
In response, the Committee Chairman, Rep. Mike Etaba assured both parties that the report will be studied by the Commitee and justice served.
“At the committee level, we will look at the Police report and I assure us that justice will prevail,” Etaba assured.