.Uzodinma Says Only Zenith Bank Is Free From Infraction
By Baron Ike with agency report
The apex bank, the Central Bank of Nigeria on Tuesday, June 13 got the mandate of the Senate to recover from the commercial banks all monies they collected on behalf of the Nigerian Customs Service which they allegedly failed to remit to the government coffers.
The CBN and the banks have also been reminded that the anti-graft agencies would be involved in the recovery if they failed to take the order seriously.
The Committee on Customs, Excise and Tariff gave the order at an investigative meeting with the CBN, Ministry of Finance, Federal Inland Revenue Service, Corporate Affairs Commission, commercial banks and other stakeholders.
Senator Hope Uzodinma, who is Chairman of the committee not only announced the ultimatum at the meeting, but said the Senate would involve the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) should the CBN fail to recover the money.
Uzodinma said of the over N30trillion being investigated by the committee, more than N536billion was domiciled at the various banks but not remitted to CBN.
His words: “There are various infractions regarding import and export duties and we have carried out detailed investigation into the matter.
“Today, we will address the non-remittance of revenue collected on behalf of Customs.
“The only bank that is free of this infraction is Zenith Bank.
“We must recover what we are able to and moving forward, we must stop this infraction that is affecting our economy negatively.”
Uzodinma said the development was worrisome and had affected the Naira adversely, particularly the
exchange rate of almost N400 to a dollar.
He gave the banks two weeks to clarify infractions relating to utilised and un-utilised Form Ms and Simple Goods Declaration (SGD), and others, including abandoned assessment of Customs Duties and foreign exchange allocation manipulation.
On infractions regarding goods destined for free trade zones, Uzodinma said imported goods flooded the market, competing with local products.
On ways to stop multiple registration of Tax Identification Number (TIN) by importers, he called for synergy among the FIRS, CAC and Customs.
Responding to shady TIN deals, the Director of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), FIRS, Kola Okunola, said that synergy among relevant organisations had started.
He added that the service has commenced automation of its system.
“Going forward, any citizen that wants to register a company would start from the registration portal of CAC.
“We have also discussed with Customs to develop their system to send their infraction list to us.
“For every name, we have the ability to do data matching with the list sent to us by Customs, ” Okunola said.