Senate panel recovers N140bn

A Senate panel yesterday said N140billion has been recovered as a result of its probe on the N30trillion revenue leakages between 2006 and 2016.

The panel said the fund has been remitted to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

The revelation followed consideration of an interim report of the joint committee on Customs, Excise and Tariff and Marine Transport chaired by Senator Hope Uzodinma (PDP, Imo).

Presenting the report, Uzodinma said N128bn has been paid to the CBN by commercial banks involved in the revenue leakages.

“As a result of this exercise, some collection banks have made remittances to the CBN to the tune of N128bn and evidence of payment and receipt have been received by the committee.

“From the selected 60 companies, over N12bn payments have been made to the government voluntarily by the companies based on their own internal self-audit after receiving documented evidence of their culpability from our committee,” he said.

Expressing hope that more money will be recovered, Uzodinma said: “It is instructive to note that despite all payments so far made, none of the approved collection banks or the selected companies have fully cleared the established liabilities against them “.

He then requested for additional eight weeks for the committee to complete its probe, saying, “While this is still a work in progress in our view, it has broken new grounds in terms of the discoveries already made and the deeper insight that has been exposed”.