Sanusi make U-turn on missing $49.8 billion

Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, Wednesday,
reversed himself from his initial declaration that the
sum of $49.8 billion realized from the sales of crude
oil between January 2012 and July 2013 and
expected to be remitted to the federation account by
the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC,
was missing.
Instead, he said $12 billion was the amount discovered
not to have been remitted to the account within the
period just as he regretted that his communication to
the president was leaked to the public.
Sanusi, who stated this when he appeared before the
Senate Committee on Finance, to give insight into his
letter he wrote to the president on the controversial
missing money, said the letter did not indicate that the
CBN had concluded its investigation on the matter.
But the Minister of Finance, Mrs Ngozi Okonjo-
Iweala, countered the CBN Governor’s position,
saying: “I just wanted to add that we found about $10.8
billion. He mentioned $12billion.”
Insisting that the letter was meant for the president to
launch an investigation into the issue, Sanusi told the
committee’s chairman, Senator Ahmed Makarfi: “I
repeat, Mr Chairman, that we did not see the letter as
a conclusion of our investigation but an invitation to
investigate. So, the conclusion that $49.8billion was
missing was wrong even though we had the allegation
that it was unremitted.”
“Now, since then, a lot has happened. We have heard
the Minister of Finance, Minister of Petroleum
Resources, Central Bank, FIRS, CPR, we have set up
technical team and has started a process of
reconciliation and there has been a lot of progress in
that process.
“I found it very unfortunate it was leaked to the press
and the answer is ‘yes’, the CBN Governor did send
that letter with those contents. By way of those
contents, the Central Bank and Finance Ministry and
the government were very much concerned over the
years at the very low rate of accretion to the reserves
in spite of very high level of oil prices and in particular,
depletion of excess crude account in spite of what
seems to be very high level of oil sales.
“Now, in investigation and trying to understand where
those leakages were, our attention was drawn to a huge
difference between what appeared to be export of
crude made by NNPC and amount repatriated into the
crude equity account of the federal government.
“The numbers were about $65 billion exported by
NNPC and about $15 billion repatriated to
Federation Account out of that. Now, in view with our
duty as the banker of the government, we had the
responsibility of alerting the president and request a
thorough investigation of this matter, he said.
He further explained that “the major progress has been
the provision of Monetary Policy Committee, PMC,
by the MPC documents to show that even though they
did ship that amount in question which is a little more
$67 billion, about $24billion was actually not their
crude but crude shipped on behalf of third parties like
oil companies, tax in crude and also for third party
financing and so, that already addresses half of the
amount.”
“So, the second half is the issues around domestic
crude lifting of $28billion from which we feel there is a
short fall, there is a general consensus among us on this
even though the amount has been disputed. For us in
Central Bank, there is a shortfall of $12billion”, he
disclosed.
But even with the amount, he said the CBN was still in
the process of reconciling the amount.
“Now, we still are in the process of trying to reconcile
that number and we have not even started talking of the
sales, the export sales tax, which is about $2billion,
which will come after the sales. The Finance Ministry
has told us that even before now, there is ongoing
negotiation and discretion with NNPC ad-hoc
committee and these numbers have always been
discussed at the level of Commissions of Finance.
“Since the objective of this committee and for all of us
on this side is actually to get to the bottom of it and find
out exactly what is the amount unremitted and what is to
be done and recommend actions.”
He pleaded for time so that the CBN, NNPC and all
relevant agencies come up with a collective figure.
“What I would like to do is, given the progress we have
made, to request that we be given little more time to
continue with this process and come back with the final
position that is a common position among us if the
committee will so grant us, ”he added
He was subsequently granted the request.
Speaking at the event earlier, Senate President, David
Mark,noted that the controversial amount was still
allegation but stressed that it was a serious one.
“At this point what we have is allegations but it’s a
serious allegation. When Senator Adetumbi raised
the point of order, I did not allow comment on the issue
“It’s for us to get facts so that when we come back we
can make useful and meaningful contributions. The
Senate has no positions on it, nobody knows apart
from what was published in the papers, that’s why we
want the committee to establish the facts, the committee,
your body language and utterances must be seen to be
totally neutral because we have no facts, we have no
position on it, we urge you to observe the facts, “he
said.

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