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THE Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has within two weeks, recovered about N100 million of more than N4 billion owed NITEL by 98 Private Telephone Operators (PTOs).
THE Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has within two weeks, recovered about N100 million of more than N4 billion owed NITEL by 98 Private Telephone Operators (PTOs).
The amount was recovered from five of the PTOs. Source at the EFCC said the commission stepped in to assist NITEL in recovering the money following a petition by the chief executive officer of the telecommunications company to the EFCC chairman.
In addition to the N100 million, three other PTOs on their own rushed to NITEL to pay about N30 million. According to sources, NITEL's petition urged an investigation of the traffic of international calls in Nigeria and other telecommunications-related offences.
"Our investigations revealed that there were a lot of illegal call termination, call re- filling, call dumping as well as non-payment of tax on equipment. "Some of the PTOs have closed shop and the possibility of NITEL tracing them without the assistance of our officials will be almost impossible," it said.
The source said that some of the PTOs whose interconnect agreement with NITEL was only for local operations, were allegedly operating international services by re-filling international calls into local numbers and making illegal terminations. "NITEL lost several millions of dollars through the illegal call termination, call re-filling and call dumping between 1999 and 2001," it added.
According to the source, some of the PTOs have made no payments in nearly three years, claiming disputed bills. It regretted that the PTOs collected commission from the international companies while NITEL paid millions of dollars to the foreign companies without knowing the PTOs responsible for the calls.