Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has initiated a thorough probe into 52 companies concerning forex transactions.
The investigation focuses on forex allocations to these companies during the tenure of Godwin Emefiele as the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
According to several reports available to Freelanews, operatives of the EFCC are currently at the Lagos head office of the Dangote Group. They are reportedly actively engaged in conducting searches and gathering information related to the forex dealings.
Dele Oyewale, the spokesperson for the EFCC, has refrained from making official comments on the ongoing investigation, maintaining a veil of secrecy around the matter.
This development raises questions about potential financial improprieties, and the EFCC’s involvement suggests a concerted effort to address any irregularities related to forex transactions during Emefiele’s tenure at the CBN.
It was reported in December how the forensic audit of the CBN under Emefiele uncovered 593 bank accounts domiciled in the United States, the United Kingdom and China in which Nigerian funds were deposited without authorisation from the board and investment committee of the apex bank.
The special investigator revealed that the sum of 543.4 million pounds was kept by Mr Emefiele in fixed deposit accounts, adding that the ex-CBN chief manipulated the naira exchange rate and committed fraud in the e-Naira project.
While some of the companies the EFCC wrote to had since complied, others asked for more time to gather the information and documents.
But in a surprising move, the EFCC stormed Dangote headquarters Thursday just as the company tried to surrender boxes of documents to the anti-graft agencies,
“The Dangote people intimated the EFCC that the documents were ready and that they were bringing them over,” a source familiar with the matter said.
“But the EFCC said its operatives would rather come to the company to collect the documents.”
The spokesperson for the Dangote Group, Anthony Chiejina, could not be reached to comment for this story.
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