Two top officials of a second generation bank are in serious trouble with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission over N2.8bn pension funds traced to five accounts in the bank.
It was gathered that the EFCC arrested the duo for allegedly assisting a former Chairman of the Pension Reform Task Team, Mr. Abdulrasheed Maina, to launder stolen pension funds.
A top operative of the commission said on Friday that Maina had been on the run since the commission filed charges against him in relation with the controversy over the missing pension funds.
He was said to have diverted huge amount of money belonging to pensioners through a phoney biometric project with some highly placed government officials at the time.
The bankers in EFCC’s custody are the bank’s Group Head, Private Banking and an accounts officer with the Business Unit of the bank’s Central Business District, Abuja.
It was gathered that the two bankers were arrested by the EFCC on Friday and were being grilled in relation with the N2.8bn pension funds.
It was further gathered that the EFCC was still going after another personnel of the bank in relation with the alleged fraud.
The bank officials are being accused of managing five proxy accounts for the former Chairman of the Pension Reform Task Team.
A top operative of the EFCC said that the accounts which comprised two corporate and three private accounts had witnessed very high ‘inflow of slushed funds.’
EFCC sources said, “The first individual account opened in the name of Abdullahi Faizer, had a turnover of N1.5bn while the other operated in the name of Nafisatu Aliyu recorded a turnover of over N100,000.
“The corporate accounts of Cluster Logistics had a turnover of N500m and $400,000. Drew Investment and Construction and Kongolo Dynamics Cleaning Limited recorded turnovers of N54m and N509m respectively.”
It was further stated that all the five accounts, four of which were alleged to have been opened by a relation of the former Chairman of the PRTT, had different opening packages.
The EFCC investigators are claiming that the accounts are being operated by PRTT’s former chairman.
It was stated that EFCC investigators were able to strike the link through a detailed analysis of telephone text messages between Maina and the bank officials.
The source added that the bulk of the money was converted to Dollars with the aid of some Bureau de Change operators and moved to Maina’s suspected hideout in the United Arab Emirates.
Our correspondent could not get the Head of Media and Publicity of the EFCC, Mr. Wilson Uwujaren, to comment on the story as the repeated calls to his mobile telephone line did not connect.
