Wonder banks and illegal funds managers have swindled a total of 560,882 customers of the sum of N106.94 billion.? The managing director of the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC), Alhaji? Umar Ibrahim, stated this at a forum organized for editors at Protea Hotel, Ikeja, last Friday.
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?Noting that the development has deep implications to the Nigerian economy, Alhaji Ibrahim stated that already, the NDIC, in partnership with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC)? and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) have set up a powerful inter-agency committee with a clear mandate to employ strong measures that would stamp out such dirty practices in the industry.
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?He stated that so far, the committee has found out that 36 companies account for N104 billion or 98 percent of the swindled sum, while Nospetco Oil and Gas Ltd alone accounts for 48 percent.? The efforts of the committee have also led to a court appointing a Liquidator to wind up Sefteg Company Nigeria Limited, which, according to him, is one of the illegal fund managers.? The Liquidator has since realised about N500 million from the assets of the company and had commenced payment to verified investors of the company, Ibrahim added.
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?The NDIC is also making efforts? to get the court to appoint? liquidators for other illegal fund management companies, to accelerate payment to their respective affected investors based on the realised assets of the companies.
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?Explaining further, the NDIC boss said his organisation aims to guarantee full coverage to private sector depositors, for which it has adopted purchase and assumption failure resolution mechanism, based on the need to give depositors easy access to their funds without conditions and encouraging depositors to establish banker-customer relationships with the acquiring banks as well as promoting a banking culture which is critical to savings mobilisation for economic development.
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As at July this year, the NDIC has paid cumulative insured deposits in respect of 35 banks in-liquidation, to the tune of N3.3 billion out of N5.2 billion, representing about 63 percent of the total.