The Executive Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC),  Mr. Ola Olukoyede, on Thursday, vowed to tackle many cases of non-performing loans in Nigeria associated with underlining fraudulent content.

The EFCC boss, in a statement on Thursday, vowed to tackle such cases of fraud in the interest of justice.

Olukoyede stated this while receiving the  Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Nigerian Export- Import, NEXIM Bank, Mallam Abba Bello  at the corporate headquarters of the EFCC.

Olukoyede stressed the Commission’s commitment towards using the anti-corruption fight to stimulate growth in the economy.

Economic Sabotage

The EFCC boss highlighted that the Commission is not a debt recovery agency, but only steps in when a certain classification of debts constitutes an economic sabotage on the nation.

He pointed out that “many cases of non-performing loans have underlining fraudulent content and the EFCC would stop at nothing to tackle such cases.” 

“We are careful of the way we come in, particularly when it comes to the issue of loan recovery. We look at the area of economic sabotage. When somebody is granted a loan, particularly if the money is from the commonwealth or from investors’ resources in a bank, and they divert the money or the money does not go to what it was meant for, obviously that is economic sabotage. More than 90% of the cases of bad loans have underlining fraud”, he explained further.

• Olukoyede noted that the mission of the EFCC and that of NEXIM Bank align in the area of stimulation of the country’s economic growth.

“We have shared mandates with your bank as an export-import promoting bank, which is to grow the economy.  Doing that, you are promoting the economy, and on our part, one of our mandates is to also use the instrumentality of the fight against corruption to grow the economy,” he stated.

• He assured that the shared mandate between the institutions would translate to the development of the nation.

More Insights  

On his part, Bello appreciated the EFCC for assisting his bank in handling several financial cases including “abuse which was occasioned by all kinds of things, technical abuse of the process of lending money to beneficiaries of the bank.” 

• He said the bank is trying to see how it can redeem the situation.

“The EFCC helped us and played a leading role in the recovery of the monies that were given out fraudulently or without following due process,” he added.

• The NEXIM boss appealed to the  EFCC to assist his bank  in  recovering loans taken by former internal staffers of the bank.

He also sought collaboration with the Commission regarding fraud prevention within the financial institution.

[Nairametrics]