By Yinka Kolawole & Emma Ovuakporie
LAGOS — Governor of the Central Bank, CBN, Mr. Lamido Sanusi, has vowed that there will be no respite for banks on corporate governance, insisting that this will help rid the industry of criminals.

Meantime, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) will, today, file a 20-count charge against the former Managing Director of Intercontinental Bank Plc, Mr Erastus Akingbola, in a Federal High Court in Lagos, with a view to extraditing him from Britain.

Governor of the Central Bank, CBN, Mr. Lamido Sanusi

Also, the anti-graft agency has described as untrue, allegations that it collects 10 per cent commission on all banks debts recovered.

According to Sanusi, “I will continue to invade and intrude into  the operations of banks for as long as I am CBN governor. Going forward, we will address corporate governance on capital and monetary issues and efforts to set up Assets Management Company, AMC, will be intensified.”

Sanusi spoke in Lagos, weekend, at the annual bankers’ dinner, organised by the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria, CIBN, on the importance of transparency and corporate governance to economic growth.

He said the actions would not be restricted to the operators but extended to the regulatory body.

The apex bank chief argued that corporate governance enhances confidence in the privatisation of companies, noting that investors are now making it clear that they are not going to foot the bill for corruption and poor corporate governance.

He said the era when bankers lend money to themselves and take it out of the economy is over, warning, “we will be looking at the governance of the industry with the view to getting rid of the criminals.

“I have learnt some lessons from the collapse of  Lehman Brothers. The first lesson is that, you should never let a big bank fail. The US had the option of spending $700 billion to save Lehman Brothers; they said they did not have the money then.

”Since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the US Government has spent $16 trillion. They have found that money from somewhere. Over 700 banks have collapsed in the US, they have had to pay and they are still paying.

“The day the nation and the international community believe that the CBN governor cannot save Oceanic or Intercontinental Bank, they would never believe that we can save others.

” If I allow one bank to go under, every bank will go under. It is only a matter of when. Second, a regulator should never base his actions on what happens in the public domain. Just three days before Lehman Brothers collapsed, S & P moved its rating to A+ from A-. Three days later, the bank collapsed,” he stated.

Sanusi said banks were not set up to finance their chief executive officers or buy shares, but rather to help secure peoples’ money and finance the economy.

He noted that when they are not doing that they have no business operating the licence.“It is about getting the banks to do what they had to do – to preserve depositors’ funds and channel savings to productive sector,” he added.

Sanusi, however, assured that Nigeria does not have a banking crisis, noting that in spite of the actions recently taken by the CBN against some banks, not a single depositor has lost a kobo in their savings.

“We have converted the crisis and placed it on the heads of those who mismanaged the banks”, he said. He declared that banks’ credit to the economy has been largely fake which, according to him, is an indication that the economy can do without them.

He asserted that the economy has been growing in the last two quarters at the rate of 7 per cent in real terms, even when banks have not been lending to the economy.

Sanusi noted that the growth has come mainly from the agricultural sector and trading. “The economy has not noticed the lack of lending from banks,” he said.

EFCC files 20-count charge against Akingbola today

Trouble seems to be unending for the former Managing Director of Intercontinental Bank Plc, Mr Erastus Akingbola as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, files a 20 count charge against him in a Federal High Court in Lagos today.

It was reliably gathered yesterday that all plans to ensure that the former bank boss is extradited from Britain will be concluded with the filing of the 20-count charge.

The source said “the charges border on money laundering and misappropriation of funds running into several billions of naira but the most recent discovery is that of the 10million pounds that was allegedly laundered by Akingbola.”

“It is glaring that as soon as we commence the extradition process, we will not leave any angle untouched to ensure that we get him back to face all the allegations levelled at him here in Nigeria.”

It would be recalled that Akingbola had escaped from the shores of Nigeria on August 14 after the Central Bank sacked the MDs of  five banks for failing the apex bank’s audit

The five banks are Oceanic Bank PLc, Intercontinental Bank Plc, Afribank Plc, Fin Bank Plc and Union Bank of Nigeria Plc.

Meanwhile, most of the sacked bank MDs and their board members marked the register at the EFCC headquarters on Friday following instructions from the courts that they must appear before the commission every first Friday of the month.

When contacted, Head, Media and Publicity of the anti-graft agency Mr Femi Babafemi confirmed that the agency will, today, file all the necessary papers to extradite the former bank MD.

…denies 10% commission on recovered debt

Meanwhile, the EFCC has described an allegation that it takes ten percent commission on debts recovered from bank debtors as a blatant lie and a cheap blackmail that cannot stop it from its present involvement in the sanitisation of the nation’s financial sector.

The Commission in a statement, yesterday, described the accusation as not only ridiculous but a well-scripted falsehood designed to create a distraction from the on-going prosecution and investigation of those that have abused their positions and betrayed depositors.

“Information available to the Commission shows that some persons that have felt uncomfortable with the involvement of the EFCC in the bank’s sanitisation efforts, especially those that have criminally lived big on depositors’ savings and those that have lost their debt recovery briefs from their collaborators in the banks, have been sponsoring this falsehood hoping it will stick and stop the Commission from forging ahead in their prosecution.

“For the avoidance of doubt and the benefit of the public, the Commission has not at any time demanded or collected any cut in whatever form from any bank over funds so far recovered for the bailed out banks or any other.

As such, attempts to blackmail the EFCC through sponsored reports cannot achieve the expected result of the sponsors, rather they will serve as an elixir in our determination to dig deeper into the rot the sponsors of the blackmail have created for their benefit and that of their collaborators.

“It should be noted that the Commission is propelled to go this far in the bank sanitisation effort not as a result of any monetary gain, which is really non-existent, but because of the need to safeguard our nation’s economic stability along with other stakeholders.

“We wish to state the following for the benefit of the Nigerian public that are at the risk of being swayed by self-serving arguments being canvassed in some quarters.

We understand that section 7 (2) of the legislation establishing the Commission states that the EFCC “shall be the coordinating agency for the enforcement of the provisions” of the following key legislations:

* The Failed Banks (Recovery of Debts) and Financial Malpractices in Banks Act 1994.

*The Banks and other Financial Institutions Act (BOFIA) 1991

These two laws alone should suffice to justify the involvement of an organization like the EFCC in the bank cleansing exercise and the recovery of loans by the Central Bank of Nigeria. However it may be necessary to go beyond that. The general issues arising from the exercise in Nigeria have shown that margin loans, other forms of loan facilities and Infraction by lenders, are the critical areas that rogues within the system utilized.

“A simple loan facility does not at face value invite the EFCC. However where the loan process from application, through processing, to approval, disbursement, utilisation and finally repayment has a criminal flavour, then the EFCC will be involved because a criminal law has been flouted. The scenarios that have justified our involvement are as follows:

Loan Application Stage: Customer represents that it wants a loan for working capital purposes but utilises the loan for private use. That is obtaining by false pretences and the EFCC established several such cases.

Loan Processing Stage: Officers of the bank are compromised and recommend a loan which the fundamentals and cash flow would ordinarily not have supported.

Loan Approval Stage: The Chief Executive of a bank approving loans that have been turned down by the Credit Committee of the Board of Directors.”