Federal investigators moved fast to place the names of 19 bank chiefs on the national security watch list yesterday, operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission [EFCC] told NEXT in Abuja.
The bank chiefs are the five chief executive officers that were fired last Friday in what industry analysts have dubbed the ‘Friday Bank Massacre', and 14 other executives who currently head subsidiary companies of the five ailing banks. "Some of (them) are Managing Directors of subsidiaries of the affected banks or of some banks next on the line to be hit" an EFCC official said.
However, three of the bank chiefs turned themselves in late yesterday, according to the EFCC spokesman, Femi Babafemi, who gave their names as Bartholomew Ebong of Union Bank, Okey Nwosu of Finbank, and Cecilia Ibru of Oceanic Bank. Unconfirmed reports gave a different rendition to Mrs. Ibru's case. She was reportedly arrested at the Lagos Murtala Mohammed International Airport as she attempted to travel out of the country.
Operatives of the State Security Service [SSS] apparently aborted her trip and handed her over to EFCC agents who proceeded to detain her at the Okotie Eboh Road office of the Banking Fraud Unit of the EFCC in Ikoyi, Lagos.
Reliable EFCC sources also revealed to NEXT late yesterday that eight bank executives who were Managing Directors in subsidiary institutions of the five ailing commercial banks were also arrested in Lagos and are currently in detention at the Ikoyi office of the EFCC.
They are Felicia Shonubi, Managing Director of Oceanic trustees; Reginald Elya, Managing Director of Oceanic Securities International Ltd; Alex Duruike, Managing Director of Finbank Securities Ltd; Emmanuel Okoji, Managing Director of Finbank Capital Ltd; Ayodele Thomas, Managing Director of Intercontinental Capital Market Ltd; Adeboye Adewoyin, Managing Director of Intercontinental Securities Ltd; Abiodun Taiwo, Intercontinental Finance and Investment Ltd; and Abubakar Mogaji, Managing Director of Intercontinental Trustees Ltd. They have all been placed on the security watch list.
Other executives on the list, according to EFCC operatives, who spoke under anonymity, are Ben Nwoji, Managing Director of Afribank Trustees Ltd, Henry Onyemem, Managing Director of Union Trustees Ltd, as well as Peter Ololo, Managing Director of Falcon Securities Ltd. Mr. Ololo is a major stock market player whose total business deals with the banks is believed to be within the range of N180 Billion. Oceanic Bank alone accounts for N40 Billion of that total value.
Mr. Babafemi said that the agency placed their names on the security watch list as a way of barring them from fleeing the country when they initially failed to honour the invitation of the EFCC to come and answer questions arising from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) audit report.
"The chairman was briefed that they have fled their homes," the EFCC spokesman said. "But one good step already taken by the Commission is that they have been watch-listed, so it is difficult for them to escape out of the country."
EFCC officials said that they had been trailing the bank executives since they were sacked on Monday. The EFCC chairman, Farida Waziri, reportedly sent a team of operatives to Lagos to invite the bank chiefs for interrogation.
However, panic arose at the agency when operatives reported that all the bank chiefs had apparently gone underground. At this point, Mr. Babafemi said, "[The] chairman was already considering the option of declaring them wanted for failing to honour a simple invitation."
On Monday, the governor of the Central Bank, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, and his team met with operatives from the EFCC led by Mrs. Waziri to officially take over investigation into the nation's ailing banks.
Three days earlier, on Friday, the Central bank had released the interim report of its ongoing bank audit upon which ground it fired the five bank chiefs for poor risk management, and shoddy governance practice. He also blamed most of the evident stress in the banking sector on failure of regulation, a culture rooted in the permissive Chukwuma Soludo years. Mr. Soludo was CBN Governor prior to Mr. Sanusi.
At the CBN-EFCC meeting, the EFCC leadership protested Mr. Sanusi's method in sacking the bank chiefs, saying that if it had been carried along in confidence, it "would have moved fast to arrest the bank chiefs at the briefing venue where Mr. Sanusi fired the five top bankers."
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