The chief executive officer of the Assets Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON), Mr. Mustafa Chike-Obi, has refused to be drawn into commenting on the issue of alleged fraud rocking Mainstreet Bank.
Chike-Obi finally responded to LEADERSHIP’s telephone calls yesterday, but refused to make any comment on the issue. He simply said, “I have no comment on the story”.
When the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) was earlier contacted, a top official who did not want his names in print said the matter is in the jurisdiction of the AMCON which is the sole shareholder of the bank.
He said the Central Bank could only be involved in such an issue if complaints are made to it. According to the source, the apex bank does not act based on newspaper report.
It is only when such a report is officially brought before it, he said, that the apex bank would now deploy its examiners to such a bank to find out what is amiss.
An alleged fraud involving N160 million is set to rock the management of the newly-formed Mainstreet Bank, formerly Afribank Ltd, according to a whistleblower’s report obtained by LEADERSHIP.
The money in question was withdrawn from the bank on December 29, 2011, without the knowledge of the board and even some of the executive directors, through a new account created by the management.
Early on, there had been rising tension between the chairman of the board, Mallam Falalu Bello, and the group managing director (GMD), Mrs. Faith Tuedor-Matthews, over the way the bank was being run, which has led to the intervention of AMCON, the CBN, and the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC).
One of the contentious issues was the appointment of 11 top management staff members of the level of general managers, deputy general managers and assistant general managers by the GMD without the board’s approval, which is in contravention of the governance rules of both the bank and the CBN.
The board of directors frowned on the appointments on the grounds that character checks had not been carried out on the new staff members and that there was a serious imbalance in the appointments, for a bank now owned by the federal government. Of the 11 new staff members, only one is a northerner.
According to LEADERSHIP checks, the fraud was committed by some of the new GMs and an AGM newly appointed by the GMD without the board’s approval.
Indicted in the transaction are the group financial officer; the group head, banking operations; and the group head, internal control.
The group chief financial officer was accused of putting five debit entries amounting to N159,520,325.13 to the newly created accounts on December 30, 2011.
But Falalu Bello, chairman of the bank, and a non-executive director claimed ignorance of the event. Both said that no such matter had been brought to the notice of the board.