The Nigeria police on Wednesday indicted Sterling Bank for alleged money laundering, fraudulent deductions and other financial crimes by its staff members.
This was contained in a report presented to the House of Representatives Committee on Public Petition during the petition hearing by Maiden Systems Ltd against Sterling Bank, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), and Shell Petroleum Development Company in Abuja.
Maiden System Ltd had petitioned the Committee on alleged mismanagement, fraudulent debit, and misappropriation of funds from its account domiciled with Sterling Bank.
Petition against Sterling Bank
Presenting the report before the committee, the representatives of the Inspector General of Police, Kabiru Yahaya and Sunny Amison, both Chief Inspectors of Police, said that after intensive investigation and arrest made on the matter, the bank was found wanting.
According to them, after the arrest was made and an extensive investigation carried out, the bank could not provide evidence to counter the allegations made against it by Maiden System Ltd.
Yahaya said: “We were saddled with the responsibility to investigate mismanagement, fraudulent debit, and misappropriation of funds from the account of Maiden Systems Limited by Sterling Bank.
“In the course of our investigation, findings emerged about the issue of non-issuance of statement of account, fraudulent debit, and misappropriation of funds. More importantly, Maiden Systems Limited raised the issue of accounts. There are four accounts operated by Sterling Bank Plc for Maiden Systems Limited. Two are U.S. dollar accounts, while two are Nigeria NGN accounts.
“Major remittance is coming to the account of Maiden Systems Limited, domiciled with Sterling Bank, and Shell Petroleum Development Company Limited. Now, we have cutting records from Shell over the period 2017 up to 2020. Shell failed, this is our finding, Shell failed to supply the financial reports for 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024.
“Now, having regard to the complaint of Maiden Systems that it was denied the statement of account, we interfaced with an account officer, who gave us in writing that the company is being furnished with the statement of account. And I asked ‘how?’ He said electronically, or by short message service. But there is no proof. There’s no proof to debunk that aspect of the allegation.
“Secondly, we discovered from the statement of account generated by the bank, not provided by the petitioner, or its counsel, or any third party. These are accounts and statements of account generated by the bank.
“We did not just call for a statement of account to just look at it and dump it.
“We looked at it holistically and saw the grey areas where there were discrepancies or where there are questions to be raised.”
CSP Amison states, “We discovered a Debt Service Repayment Account (DSRA) where money is being used to service the loan.
“The loan offer as of 2012 was $30 million. We need to understand it was restructured in 2017, with capital and interest to arrive at US$30 million.
“Having regard to the account, we, a team of detectives, started seeing debits, debits from Maiden System account for loan repayment. And we took it upon ourselves to ask the account officer that first came before us to explain the loan repayment but he said it was a mere narration adopted while applying funds to the company’s loan account. We found this very vague and ambiguous.
“We discovered that about US$28.3 million was debited from this company’s account for loan repayment but there’s no explanation.
“Particularly, on the 29th September, 2016, the sum of US$2,413,000 was debited from the company’s account. Account number 00148517716 for loan repayment with reference FT16271UZYO. On 14th November, 2016, the sum of US$1.256 million was equally debited from this same account for loan repayment.
“While on the 16th of January, 2017, the sum of US$28,302,140.59 was debited from the company’s account for loan repayment. And like I said, we’ve waited for the bank to provide account officers who have managed this account to throw more light on this. It is not our document.
“It is their own document. The facts are before them. If somebody has managed that account before and is no longer an account officer, they could call them, provide names since they are no longer in the bank.
“One of the account officers specifically wrote that the outstanding balance was about US$27.25 million, while the executive director gave us a figure of over US$30 million. That is to say, nothing has been paid, nothing has been debited to clear the loan.
“We equally discovered what the bank captured in the statement of account, in-branch transfer, account to account. And we asked, what does the bank or the account officers mean by in-branch transfer, account to account?
“We have come up with the recommendation that, since the bank has failed to provide evidence for itself to debunk the allegation raised by Median Systems, evidence as used so far from their own statement of account corroborates the offences alleged. Financial mismanagement, fraudulent debit, misappropriation of funds and more importantly, when funds are being moved that way, if you go deeper, money laundering. We could not even go deeply towards the petitioner raising their petition.”
Responding, the Chairman of the Committee, Mike Etaba, assured both parties that the Committee would study the report and justice served.
“At the committee level, we will look at the Police report and I assure us that justice will prevail,” Etaba said.
