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General News of Friday, 21 May 2021

Source: punchng.com

EFCC threatens MDA chiefs with arrest, recovers looted N1bn

EFCC EFCC

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission said on Thursday that it might go after any head of federal agencies indicted by the report of Senate Committee on Finance after the conclusion of its current probe of the finances of ministries, department and agencies.

The panel led by Senator Solomon Adeola is currently holding an investigative hearing into the internally generated revenues of the MDAs and their compliance with the one per cent stamp duty by contractors on all contracts awarded by them between 2014 and 2020.

Appearing before the Senate panel on Thursday, the EFCC Chairman, Mr Abdulrasheed Bawa, commended the panel for its investigations. The panel is currently probing the finances of over 700 MDAs.

Bawa said, “At this point in the nation’s history, it is not much about generating revenue as much as blocking leakages of revenue generated and still being generated by all these agencies of government.”

Bawa said he would have been happy to go away with one of the heads of agencies immediately from the revelations that the committee unearthed in the course of observing the documents presented by the agency.

He said, “It is good for us to observe for now and wait for your committee to conclude its work so that whatever report you have and anyone that your committee decides, we are ready to take it up from there.”

Bawa disclosed that the anti-graft agency last week recovered over N1bn cash in one bank account of a civil servant. He said there were lots of leakages that needed to be blocked.

“We have recovered over N1bn sitting in the account of a civil servant last week,” the EFCC boss said.

Bawa further disclosed that there had been no audit queries since the departments started functioning and therefore advised other MDAs to copy the template of EFCC.

Adeola had earlier said that the focus of the investigation was informed by the need to curb recurrent federal budget deficit and the resort to borrowing while agencies of government earned and frivolously spent generated revenues of the government.

“The practice is for them to spend generated government revenues illegally while still collecting funds from the government that has to resorts to borrowing to fund them,” Adeola stated.

In course of the sitting, the Federal College of Education, Okene, was ordered to pay back to the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation the total sum of N242m it generated and spent contrary to the 1999 Constitution and the Fiscal Responsibility Act, 2007 within five months.