We discovered that of the roughly $7 billion, about $2.4 billion had issues, which we believe had no business being there
Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor Yemi Cardoso has stated that the apex bank uncovered $2.4 billion in invalid foreign outstanding claims, which are squeezing the naira and causing anxiety in the currency market.
Cardoso confirmed this in an interview with Arise Television on Monday.
According to Cardoso, this was discovered during an audit by the CBN’s consultant, which disclosed a number of suspicious transactions.
The CBN Governor stated that the apex bank commissioned Deloitte to look into the FX allegations to provide a true picture of the situation.
Cardoso said, according to the Deloitte assessment, up to $2.4 billion of the backlog consists of fictitious claims, with claimants in certain cases being unable to provide import documentation.
“We had had reasons to believe we needed to take a harder look at these obligations. So we contracted Deloitte management consultants to do a forensics of all these obligations and to actually tell us what was valid and what was not,” Mr Cardoso said.
“The result that came out of this was startling in a great respect. It was startling. We discovered that of the roughly $7 billion, about $2.4 billion had issues, which we believe had no business being there and the infractions on that ranged from so many things, for example not having valid import documents and in some cases entities that do not exist,” he said.