An unnamed civil servant, who is said to be a junior officer in the Pension Commission, has been arrested by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), for act of fraud.
Chairman of the Commission Ekpo Nta, who disclosed the arrest of the civil servant, said he was arrested for operating 50 different bank accounts with 50 different names and 50 different signatures, with several millions pf naira lodged in the accounts.
Nta disclosed this while appearing before the House of Representatives Committee on Anti-Corruption, National Ethics and Values, chaired by Abiodun Faleke, to defend the 2014 budget of the commission.
Giving details of the fraudulent act perpetrated by the unnamed civil servant, the ICPC Chairman explained that the officer was able to operate the 50 different bank accounts successfully as he kept a diary containing the different bank accounts, the names allocated to each of the accounts and the signatures for each of the account for easy transactions.
He lamented that unknown to the public, the junior officers in the Pencom had perpetrated monumental fraud in the commission, running into several billions of naira unnoticed, while attentions were only being focused on its top officials.
The ICPC boss disclosed that it was when the commission intervened in the Pension administration funds under the Head of Service of the Federation last year that it actually discovered what was happening in the commission.
Explaining how ICPC has been of help to Pencom, he said that by the intervention in the Pension funds, ICPC was able to reduce the bank accounts being operated by the Pencom scattered in 40 banks to only four banks accounts.
He disclosed further that the agency also recovered over N469.325million being the accrued interest discovered in the pension accounts and paid the same amount to the Sub-Treasury of the Federation
Nta also disclosed that through his commission’s intervention and review of the 2012 Personnel Cost budget performance in 234 Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), in 2013 over N9billion unspent balance was returned to the treasury while over N24.75billion being irregular payments to MDAs were also recovered and paid to the treasury
In addition, the ICPC boss disclosed that the commission also discovered N1.2billion stock in the accounts of four MDAs based on court orders and that the amounts were yet to be remitted to the Federation Account due to litigation.
According to him the MDAs involved in the illegal act and amounts are Irrua Specialist Hospital (N450.2m), Federal Medical Centre Makurdi (N1,222,681.50), Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), (N107.9m) and the University of Benin Teaching Hospital (N621m).
He said that the Commission also seized 372 International Passport upon its investigation of Visa Scam, fake Note Verbales and accompanying documents and that 36 suspects were arrested in connection with the Scam