Posted by By LUCKY NWANKWERE, Abuja on
As controversy over the decision to send the chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu on a one-year course at the Nigerian Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Kuru, rages, a chartered accountant has petitioned President Umaru Yar'Adua accusing the EFCC of attempting to conceal a $16.8 billion fraud.
As controversy over the decision to send the chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu on a one-year course at the Nigerian Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Kuru, rages, a chartered accountant has petitioned President Umaru Yar'Adua accusing the EFCC of attempting to conceal a $16.8 billion fraud.
The petitioner, Mr. Fidelis Uzonwanne, a managing consultant of ABZ Integrated Limited, Abuja, alleged that his organisation, between 2003 and 2005 worked as a consultant to the EFCC during which it uncovered $6,516,617 lost revenue through tax evasion and an identified additional recoverable sum of $10.8 billion being unremitted taxes and penalties by a multinational oil company (name withheld).
Rather than act on the disclosure and bring the offending oil firm to book, he said the Nuhu Ribadu-led EFCC developed cold feet and became restless at the resolve to open up the economy by de-mystifying the oil and gas industry.
He said what the country had lost and may still be losing from the connivance of the anti-corruption agency when compared with what some state governors being currently prosecuted by the EFCC were accused of stealing 'is only a tip of the iceberg, a trickle in the mighty ocean."
Uzonwanne, in the petition equally sent to the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice; the Minister of Finance; the Chairman, House Committee on Petroleum (Upstream), the Executive Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Services (FIRS) also decried the role played by chief executives of ICPC, Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) on the issue.
He further alleged that despite the petitions forwarded to the offices of these agencies charged with the responsibility of ensuring transparency in the economy and duly acknowledged, they refused to make the findings of his organisation public.
He explained that the actions of FIRS and NEITI 'do not conform with President Yar'Adua's policy of zero tolerance for corruption" and called on FIRS to be transparent enough to make available its findings on 'our report which identified a recoverable amount of $10.8 billion from the oil company."
Alleging a high level cover up of fraud in the oil sector by EFCC, FIRS and NEITI, Uzonwanne pointed to an earlier promise by NEITI to 'publish all the information resulting from these comprehensive financial, physical and process audits of the Nigeria Extractive Industry", adding, however, that NEITI had refused to do the right thing.
The consequence of not bringing to book companies that default in remitting taxes to the Federal Government, according to him, was that 'the oil companies and their collaborators will continue to milk the country dry, and the fight against corruption, as is presently being pursued, cannot yield the desired result."