By Wisdom Patrick, Lagos

Operatives of the Nigerian anti-graft agency, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, are on the heels of some 215 Micro-finance bankers over fraud and misapplication of depositors funds in their respective banks.

Operators of the banks were also said to be granting questionable loans to themselves using proxies and relatives, who later could not redeemed such liabilities as at when due.

Speaking to Political Economist in a telephone interview from Abuja, the Chairman of the commission, Ibrahim Lamorde, stated that investigation into the scam began in January, when petitions started flooding the Commission’s headquarters in Abuja from depositors of the affected banks.

Lamorde, stated further that the alleged fraud was perpetrated between 2007 and 2013. “So far they diverted over N1.9Billion and what they are telling us is that the bank failed, but we would not buy such because we would dig deeper until we get to what we want.”

Investigation revealed further that some of  the beneficiaries of the loan have either changed their addresses or relocated abroad making it a little difficult for the EFCC agents to contact them.

It was gathered that  some of the bankers under investigation  told the affected persons to go under to evade arrest by the anti-graft agents.

Sources added that already the affected bankers have made confessional statements to EFCC, “but others outright denied the allegation in its entirety, but we would  get to the root of it all. There is nothing hidden under the sun, we have all what it would take to unravel the facts of the matter and soon we would do that,” EFCC operatives said.

The anti-graft agency boss also added that top ten banks in Nigeria reported frauds and forgeries in over two thousand cases in 2013 alone through the Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation, NDIC.

He added that investigation shows that the largest number of the reported cases were through the Automated Teller Machine, ATM, transactions, fraudulent transfers/withdrawals through insider facilitation,  internet banking, and suppression of customer deposits.

Details of the nature of the frauds show that ATM-related frauds topped with 738 reported cases, followed by fraudulent transfers/withdrawal of deposit (331 cases), presentation of forged cheques (280 cases) and outright theft (240 cases).

Other cases include suppression of customer deposit, 219; fraudulent conversion of cheques, 123; non-dispensing of money, but registered by electronic journal, 112; and internet fraud, 108.

It would be recalled that the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of NDIC, Umaru Ibrahim, said most of the 195  Microfinance Banks, MFBs, that took the routine examination during the year, violated the basic principles of corporate governance as well as gross disregard for recommendations made in previous examination reports.

To sanitize the microfinance sub-sector, Mr. Ibrahim said,  about 55 directors, staff and related parties of 19 closed MFBs who were found to be responsible for the collapse of their banks in 2013 were prosecuted, while the cumulative recovery for the banks in liquidation since 1994 rose from about N21.756 billion in 2010 to about N22.236 billion during the year.

According to the report, the operating environment of the country’s banking sector witnessed improvements in asset quality, liquidity and capitalization of banks following the injection of fresh capital after their non-performing loans were taken over by the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria, AMCON.