A statement issued yesterday by the Director, Corporate Communications, CBN, Alhaji Ibrahim Muazu explains that during a routine internal audit of the Bank’s Cash Destruction activities in September 2014, the CBN Briquetting Panel comprising Senior Bank Staff from different branches noticed some anomalies at the Ibadan branch and immediately reported this to the Bank’s Management.

On further investigation ordered by the CBN Governor, it was discovered that a systematic scheme, which has been on for several years, was being run in which mutilated higher denomination notes originally meant for destruction were swapped with lower denomination currencies. This practice known as interleafing, basically labels a box with a higher value than its true content.
As soon as the Bank’s internal investigations concluded beyond reasonable doubt that some wrongdoing had occurred, the affected members of staff who are middle-level officers were, depending on gravity of offence, either summarily dismissed or immediately placed on indefinite suspension on 21 October 2014, and all handed over to the EFCC for further investigation and prosecution.

The CBN has also conducted a nationwide audit of all 37 branches of the Bank and found that this was an isolated scheme at Ibadan Branch.

CBN however vows to collaborate with the EFCC to ensure that affected CBN staffs, as well as their accomplices in some commercial banks, are brought to justice.

On Sunday, EFCC arrested six top officials of Nigeria’s Central Bank and 16 other workers of commercial banks for allegedly stealing and putting into circulation defaced and mutilated Nigerian currency notes to the tune of N8 billion meant for destruction. They were arraigned at the Federal High Court, Ibadan on Tuesday, June 2. The trial will runs till June 4.

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