By Dele Sobowale

“During a routine internal audit of the bank’s cash destruction activities in September 2014, the CBN Briquetting Panel comprising senior bank staff from different branches noticed some anomalies at the Ibadan branch.. CBN, PUNCH, June 3, 2015 p 7.

For years, my colleague in the VANGUARD, Henry Boyo, had written repeatedly about excess liquidity mop-up by the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN. To be candid Boyo had almost sounded like a broken record. His recommendation regarding DOLLAR CERTIFICATES, had not received the national debate among economists and policy makers that it deserves.

EFCC operatives leading fresh suspects in the N8 billion CBN staff fraud to the court premises in Ibadan, Oyo State, yesterday

The matter of recurrent liquidity mop-up by the CBN must have been baffling to economists as well as serious observers of Nigeria banking sector. The nagging question had been: how and from where did excess liquidity develop so soon again after an exercise?

In other words, from where do the large influxes of Naira notes emerge which induce another round of liquidity mop-up?

The revelation of N8bn currency scam, in the Ibadan branch in late May 2015, might provide some clue into how our financial system had been sabotaged by CBN workers over the years.

The CBN, in short, had developed a lot of people who had committed crimes bordering on treason because the quickest way to run down an economy is to ruin its currency.

The culprits identified, so far, as well as others who will eventually be revealed to be accomplices, had provided some of the answer to the question of why the CBN repeatedly had to mop up “excess liquidity”. Even the village idiot knows that if you are trying to mop up water from a flooded room, it would not help if somebody is pouring more water in.

What the CBN staff and their collaborators in commercial banks have been doing amounts to adding more liquidity while the mop up is going on. This is no ordinary theft; it is treason. One notion which should be quickly discarded is that this is a recent occurrence.

Granted, the CBN announcement said that what was discovered is “a systematic scheme, which has been on for several years”, it is most likely that the bank itself does not now know how long this scheme had been on and how much was involved.

One aspect of the scam should however be of interest to all of us – the involvement of commercial banks’ staff in the scam. To this writer, this is not surprising. It is a fact, easily established, that no large scale fraud or money laundering activities can occur without the collaboration of several commercial bank officials. Without them nothing big can occur.

In an article I had published in June 2008 titled BANKING OR LEGALISED SWINDLE IN NIGERIA, the point was made that the average bank manager might as well be called a robber in designer suits. It has been like that since our Fellow Nigerians took to running banks in the 1950s.

In fact, it is quite possible that if a thorough investigation were conducted few of our bankers, past and present will escape the goal for their nefarious activities – which make professional armed robbers look like saints. An example from the current case will illustrate the point.

One of the accused, a semi-illiterate Cash Officer, in a bank, had over N140 million in one bank account, in addition to assets all over the globe. This is in a country where the Know Your Customer policy in supposed to operate. It is also a safe bet that the fellow must have deposited over one million in that account several times without the Branch Managers notifying the deposits to security agencies as they were supposed to do.

Certainly, he must have made several payments, some in millions, against that account during the years the scam was on. Yet, nobody in that branch of the bank alerted the authorities. Thank God, the fellow is not an arms dealer for boko Haram; otherwise, the branch and all its officials, who serviced this account, would have endangered our lives – in addition to helping in promoting economic sabotage bordering on treason.

But, just in case the reader gets the impression that this condemnation is directed at the more junior staff of banks, let me quickly say that nothing can be further from the truth. Banks staffs are typical Nigerians, with the built-in desire to get rich quick. Most of them, although fortunate to have jobs, are actually living on the edge of desperation. They have extended families to who they feel responsible.

Added to that is job insecurity – which is pervasive in the sector. It is difficult to remain honest when your life line might be severed tomorrow. They are unlike other desperate Nigerians in one way, which is cause of the problems. With only a few thousand Naira in their own accounts, they are exposed to (b)millions of the currency everyday and to people embarking on shady deals.

Even a saint would be tempted and it is not surprising that many succumb to the temptation to steal – when the right opportunity presents itself.

BANKS AS THE DEVIL’S ORIGINAL WORKSHOP

If indeed money is the root of all evil; then the devil would have been an idiot, not the crafty fellow he is reputed to be, if he did not set up shop in every bank on earth. Where else is so much money on display every day?…