Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
The House of Representatives joint Committee on Finance and Banking and Currency is set to grill officials of 24 commercial banks and 14 International Oil Companies (IOCs) over alleged loss of $30 billion revenue due to leakages, during an investigative hearing scheduled to commence on Monday.
Documents obtained yesterday indicated that the banks and IOCs are expected to explain to the joint committee , chaired by James Faleke and Victor Nwokolo, the role of their organisations in the alleged revenue leakages, especially as it concerns interest payment on account of foreign currency dominated contracts by companies in engineering, procurement, construction, installation and marine transportations.
According to the document, the investigative hearing would be conducted in phases, to enable the joint committee comply with extant COVID -19 protocol.
The House had in March mandated the joint committee to investigate the alleged $30 billion annual revenue leakages arising from foreign exchange allocation to companies from sources such as the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), interbank, domiciliary and over the counter purchases for importation of physical goods, payments of foreign service vendors, dividend repatriation and foreign loans.
The Committee is expected to determine the level of culpability of each organization in the alleged revenue loss “based on every revenue line item collectible by government agencies for the purpose of timely recovery into government accounts.”
The document listed IOCs expected to appear before the committee as: Nigeria Agip Exploration (NAE), Nigeria Agip Oil Company (NAOC), PAN Ocean Oil Nigeria Limited, Shell Nigeria Exploration & Producing Company Limited, Esso Exploration & Producing Nigeria Limited and Mobile Producing Nigeria Limited.
Others are Statoil Company Limited, Shell Petroleum Development Company, Star Deep Water Petroleum Nigeria Limited and Total E&P Nigeria Limited, Total Upstream Nigeria Limited, Sterling Oil Exploration Energy Limited, Addax Petroleum Development Company Limited and Addax Exploration Limited.
The joint committee had last week threaten to issue arrest warrant against the chief executives of the companies, alongside heads of government parastatals, if they fail to furnish it with relevant information this week.
