Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
The House of Representatives, on Tuesday, threatened to issue warrants of arrest against the Director of Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), the Managing Director National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS) for failing to make a presentation before the House joint Committees on Finance and Banking and Currency.
The joint Committee is investigating the alleged 30 billion dollar annual revenue leakages arising from the actions of multinational oil companies.
The House had in March mandated the joint Committee on Finance and Banking and Currency to conduct a public hearing to probe alleged revenue leakages amounting to 30 billion dollars, arising from abuse of foreign exchange allocation to companies for the purpose of payment of foreign vendors, deposit Money Banks, Forex Dealers among others.
Other companies and agencies , which the House is threatening to issue arrest warrant against their Chief executives for failing to present documents to the joint Committee are PAN Ocean Oil Nigeria Ltd, Statoil Company Ltd, Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company Ltd, Pipeline and Product Marketing Company (PPMC), Addax Petroleum Development Company Ltd, Chevron, Sterling oil exploration and Heritage Exploration.
The Chairman, House Committee on Finance, James Faleke, who said the affected companies have not be co-operating with the House in its quest to unravel the issues surrounding the alleged 30 billion dollar revenue leakages.
He noted that the affected companies and government agencies have also refused to honour repeated invitations to them to appear before the joint Committee.
Faleke added that “the multinational companies are also accused of tax evasion, malpractices, misuse and diversion of foreign exchange allocations”.
Consequently, the lawmaker noted that if they fail to furnish the House with the relevant documents requested from them within the next seven days, the parliament will be compelled to issue arrest warrants against them.
“The joint Committee has given the organisations seven days to furnish the Committee with details of documents required or face arrest in line with the Constitutional provision” he stated