Reps uncover N300 billion unclaimed funds in commercial banks

The House of Representatives ad-hoc Committee investigating unclaimed funds in commercial banks has discovered over N300 billion of such money.

Unyime Idem, chairman of the committee disclosed this at the resumed hearing on the issue with the officials of Citibank Plc in Abuja.

The lawmaker said the funds were either unremitted or hanging funds as a result of failed transactions between federal government and commercial banks”.

He said: “A situation where we have been borrowing money to fund major capital projects while we can get such within is unacceptable. So far we have discovered N300 billion which is just a little percent of what we are trying to recover.

Idem, who stated that the committee has the mandate of the parliament to recover about N1.2 trillion which had been hanging, said the N300 billion was discovered on Tuesday.

Some members of the Committee picked holes in the documents submitted by Citi bank which showed different figures and number of customers from the recent documents submitted by the bank.

Mohammed Bio (APC, Kwara), a member of the Committee insisted that the representative of the bank be made to explain the discrepancies on their books.

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He said: “They (Citi bank) had earlier submitted an account record of customers without BVN (Bank Verification Number) with a number of 11 people with huge sums of money but today they made another submission on the content but the figures and number of customers stood at 7 with just little money to their names which makes it curious.

“What are they trying to hide or could this be an after thought that they had to bring these new documents”.

But Ngozi Omokeme, representative of Citi bank, who is the executive director Operations and Technology said no documents were falsified.

“With all due respect we are not here to change any documents. Also I am not here to falsify any documents. I did not have any document that is outside what we have earlier submitted. The documents are consistently the same”, she said.

Ruling, Chairman of the Committee, Idem vowed that his team would recover all monies meant to be remitted into the public coffers.

“The commercial banks are regulated by the government and they cannot refuse us. This assignment is crucial. We will not allow any government agencies or commercial banks to undermine our power. If the commercial banks fail to appear the next line of action will be to summon,” he said.

The committee also rejected the documents presented by the Nigeria Investment Promotion Commission.