[1] Topic: FRAUD SCANDAL: Jonathan, Allison-Madueke & Okonjo-Iweala Caught In The Act? (Read 105 times) sssmith (13) On Newbie (m) | 50 mins ago President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and two of his top ministers may be attempting a cover-up on what clearly competes as Nigeria’s biggest fraud ever, involving the illegal diversion, or theft, of over N8trillion crude oil sales proceeds.In a frantic and unusual memo to the president on September 25, 2013, Central Bank governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi detailed how government-owned oil firm, the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, had systematically diverted N8trillion, being sales proceeds between January 2012 and July 2013.CBN governor revealed that for all crude oil sales within the period, NNPC paid only 24 percent proceeds into the federation account, and diverted or stole the remaining 76 percent-totalling N8 trillion.As the CBN calculated, the NNPC sold at least 594 million barrels of oil within the period, and should have paid N10.3 trillion (USD65.3 billion) into the federation account. But the corporation paid only N2.5 trillion (USD15.5 billion), Mr. Sanusi said, citing documentation from pre-shipment inspectors.Unbelievable: The whereabouts of the huge balance is unknown...The weight of the differential is clearer if evaluated against the fact that the tiny percentage remitted by the NNPC managed to finance the nation in that period, raising the question of how much the total would then have achieved for a country unable to pay its university lecturers who have been on strike for five months.Put simply, for each barrel of oil sold, say at an average of USD100, the NNPC illegally cornered $74 into an unknown account and gave Nigeria only $26.Mr. Sanusi said he was “constrained” to hint the president after observing the huge shortfalls for years. He accused the NNPC of breaching two key federal laws, and urged the president to act expeditiously by ordering sweeping investigation and prosecution of those found culpable.Two months on, the president has refused to act on the damning memo delivered to him personally by the CBN governor. In fact, after receiving the letter, the president, presidency sources say, questioned Mr. Sanusi on why such letter should be prepared in the first place and sent to him.PREMIUM TIMES can also confirm that finance minister and former World Bank chief, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, is also aware of the CBN’s information and has done nothing about it; while petroleum minister, Alison Diezani-Madueke, implicated in several corruption probes in the past, is said to be fully in the know about the massive plunder of crude oil money by the NNPC.President challenged on corruptionDetails of the president’s failure to act on such a massive scale of misappropriation came amid an increasing criticism of Mr. Jonathan’s response to corruption, as several senior officials of his government, accused of stealing or wasting public funds, have been spared of indictment and prosecution.The weightiest of such concerns came on Monday from the speaker of the House of House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, who publicly accused the president of consistently displaying a “body language” that encourages corruption.Citing past scandals, the most recent being the N255 million armoured car fraud involving aviation minister, Stella Oduah, Mr. Tambuwal said the president’s penchant for duplicating committees to investigate corruption cases, rather than directing law enforcement agencies to probe them, showed Mr. Jonathan was less committed to curbing fraud.“By the action of setting up different committees for straightforward cases, the president’s body language doesn’t tend to support the fight against corruption,” the speaker said at an event in Abuja.Between 2011 and 2013, the House of Representatives has investigated the NNPC multiple times, and has in many cases found officials of the corporation wanting. But no one has been sanctioned by government.In 2012, top management of the NNPC and the petroleum minister, Mrs. Madueke, who directly supervises the NNPC, were recommended for prosecution by the House in a shocking fuel subsidy probe. They accused officials have remained at their posts.The CBN’s allegation is the most scathing yet for a corporation notorious for secrecy and corruption.The diverted or stolen amount-N8 trillion between January 2012 and July 2013- is the nearly the equivalent of the total federal budgets for two years.Put together, the sum can run the entire country for the period, build several new roads and railways, pay wages of millions of workers, cater for the nation’s teeming unemployed, build thousands of hospitals and schools, complete ongoing power projects, and on an urgent note, clear multiple times, all government financial obligations to university lecturers, whose ongoing strike has kept the universities shut for more than five months now.More losses and the ECAEven so, when compared with prevailing data from different government agencies, the figure admitted by the CBN is still lesser than what Nigeria should earn from oil sales.While the bank said its computation, based on pre-shipment details, showed that Nigeria sold N10.3 trillion worth of oil in 19 months, PREMIUM TIMES’ analysis shows the government should rather realize N10.6 trillion in the first 10 months of 2013-Janaury to October-alone.PREMIUM TIMES’s estimates is based on the government’s data of daily production average of 2.11 million barrels of crude, sold at

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