Akin Kuponiyi
A Federal High Court sitting in Lagos, southwest Ngeria, has adjourned till 30 September continuation of trial of an accused manager of First City Monument Bank Plc, Andrea Chizoba Okpalangwu, alleged to have been fraudulently operating illegal banking activities within the bank.
According to a petition written to Commissioner of Police, Special Fraud Unit, and jointly signed by the Head of legal services of the bank, Olufemi Adekunle and another lawyer Adewale Fati from the same legal department, what led to the trial of the accused FCMB manager started sometime in november, 2012 when Sterling Bank Plc Head Office alerted First City Monument Bank Plc of suspicious transfer of N15 million from an account in FCMB Revue World Resources Limited company account number 0779848013 to account in their bank, Bizmates Energy company.
Sterling bank stated further that their customer (Bizmate Energy) later gave them another instruction to transfer the money back into various accounts in FCMB.
It was in turn discovered by the group internal auditor of FCMB after investigation that: (1) The staff of Bizmate Energy maintained individual salary accounts in FCMB which were opened between August and October 2012. The staff of the company were availed salary plus facilities usually about two weeks after opening of the accounts. It was noticed that as soon as these loans were disbursed, the staff will transfer the disbursed funds to Revue World Resources in FCMB.
(2) Forty-Five staff of Bizmate Nigeria Ltd were availed various salary plus loans totaling N146,633,000 based on categorization of the company carried out by Andrea Okpalangwu, a staff of FCMB. The categorization provided by Andrea Okpalangwu showed that the company had a turnover of N1.2 billion in 2011 and over N900 million in the financial year end of 2010. She claimed Bizmate Energy provided the documents used for the …Read More
Source:: PM Newspaper
