The House of Representatives ad-hoc committee probing looted funds in the country has ordered a commercial bank (names withheld) to show proof that the sum of $300 million dollars formerly in its vault has been remitted to Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation NNPC.

The panel further requested the payment transaction between the NNPC and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) be forwarded to it within five working days.

The committee demand followed claims by the senior management staff of the affected that the money has been returned to the federal government treasury when he appeared before the panel on Thursday in Abuja.

Speaking at the resumed hearing, chairman of the panel, Adejoro Adeogun, explained that they were going to invite NNPC to answer queries why they left such a colossal sum of money not managed over the years

“Well, we will invite the NNPC, because there are questions for NNPC to answer, especially as the management of this fund. Could you have deliberately almost left $300 million in an account, left it unmanaged for this number years so we need to invite them” he said.

Speaking before the panel, the top bank official said they made written submission stating clearly that the money was deposited in the normal course of business.

He said the account relationship actually started early in 2012 with the first transfer of about $30 million subsequently some more money actually came in, so it was a normal banking relationship. But then when TSA instruction was issued, the bank was not able to remit the money as directed because of liquidity issues.

“The liquidity issues really arose because the bank in the normal course financial intermission lent out money particularly to the oil and gas sector because of the challenges that the sector had gone through earlier on. So customers were not able to pay back all the money at the time it was required to enable the bank to return the money.

“We did explain this situation to the various committees and government agencies that we met including the CBN who were of course copied in the of all these engagements.

“Somewhere along the line, precisely December 2018, the federal government through the now-disbanded presidential investigation panel for the recovery of public property instituted a suit on this matter.

“We appointed the defence of Falana & Falana to handle the case and represent us in the process. However in 2019 February, in demonstration of our commitment to begin to repay that deposit, we made a proposal to begin to make an instalment payment o $10 million monthly and we started that payment from that very month. And because the federal government found merit in our case and commitment to begin that payment. Subsequently, the government agreed that the monthly payment should be entered as consent payment and it was so done.

“We started that payment as agreed and entered a consent judgement and we have to state that as of today before this honourable committee, we have made a total payment of $224, 324, 958 and 75 cent which was outstanding as of February 2019. Today, we, therefore, have nothing, not a dollar, not a cent outstanding in Polaris bank in favour of NNPC. We have fully repaid that amount of money, we don’t have anything outstanding in our books”, he said.

The boss of the concerned bank noted that there was never a time existence of these funds were hidden from any government agency at all including the house committee on Treasury Single Account (TSA) as alleged.

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“Since we got on board since the dissolution of the old board we had an engagement with several government agencies — the presidential investigative panel, EFCC, SIP, senate committee — there has never been any time where the existence of this fund was hidden or never disclosed in writing”, he said.

A Special prosecutor of the disbanded Special Presidential Investigation Panel, Mr Tosin Ojaomo had appeared before the House ad-hoc committee and questioned the indicted bank stating that: “If the MD of the affected bank is not aware, I’m informing him that they were arrested before they confessed to keeping this money with them. There is a case file on this issue. It was when members of the management were brought to the panel, that they confessed that truly the money is with them”.