Abuja, March 26, 2024 – The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has invited security agencies to investigate some invalid foreign exchange transactions valued at $2.4 billion.
These transactions were part of the $7 billion backlog of foreign exchange commitments inherited by the CBN from former Governor Godwin Emefiele.
Yemi Cardoso, the CBN governor, announced this while briefing journalists on the outcome of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) in Abuja on Tuesday.
He said the transactions were illegal as they failed to meet the regulatory criteria set by the CBN for foreign exchange allocations.
Cardoso listed their anomalies to include the allocation of millions of dollars in in foreign exchange to requests that were never made, allocations without naira backup and lack of satisfactory documentation.
“We determine that a number of these transactions did not qualify. In some cases, we have some allocations made in millions of dollars, which were never requested for; we also had somewhere they had no naira and they were also allocated some foreign exchange.
“It was for that reason that we refused to validate those particular transactions. Apart from the fact that documentation was not satisfactory, in many cases, they were outright illegal.
“The law enforcement agencies are now looking into those transactions that as far as we are concerned, are not valid to be paid.” (GBN)
