The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Olayemi Cardoso, stated that the Deloitte audit uncovered that $2.4 billion, out of the reported $7 billion in outstanding foreign exchange liabilities of the federal government, is ineligible for settlement.
Cardoso revealed this information on Monday during an interview with Arise Television.
He revealed that the bank has paid out $2.3 billion for approved foreign exchange requests.
The governor of the CBN stated that there were currently $2.2 billion in outstanding foreign exchange liabilities.
Cardoso went on to say that a portion of the $7 billion in unpaid FX claims were fraudulent, citing the findings of a forensic investigation conducted by Deloitte Management Consultant under the apex bank’s commission.
The governor of the CBN expressed his confidence that the unpaid foreign exchange liabilities would be settled soon.
Cardoso assured Nigerians that CBN would not pay for FX requests that were not validly constituted, adding that the bank has written to authorised dealers to explain the disparities identified.
He said, “And sadly, quite frankly, I think much of those have not been disputed to our satisfaction.
“The result that came out of this was startling in a great respect; it was quite startling. We discovered that of the roughly $7 billion, about $2.4 had issues, which we believed had no business being there – and the infractions from that range from so many things.
“For example, not having valid import documents and in some cases, even entities that did not exist and in some cases, beneficiaries and account parties that asked for FX and got more than they asked for.
“And those who didn’t even ask for any and got. So, there were a whole load of infractions there, which I said amounted to about $2.4 billion out of the $7 billion headline figure.”