One of the managing directors sacked on Monday by the Presidency, has played a fast one on the government by approving multi-million loans to his cronies and associates before stepping aside. He is said to have gone into hiding shortly after handing over to one of he top officials of the agency, which has been plunged into huge avoidable debts incurred by reckless spending by the sacked board and management. The man is said to have gone under to avoid being taken in the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, which had been trailing him even before his sack last Monday. Among other crimes allegedly committed by the man, was the huge sum of N1 billion, which he claimed to have donated towards the re-election campaign of former President Jonathan and the N300 million bribe he demanded from a popular farming group in Lagos as a condition for approving a N1.5 billion expansion credit to a popular Lagos farming entity recommended by a former president of Nigeria. The dismissed official, who headed one of the development financial institutions, reportedly ignored the directive of the presidency to hand over immediately to the next most senior official but worked for two additional days to achieve his inordinate mission.
Insiders, who are upset with the way the sacked official carried on in the establishment, said he reluctantly handed over on Wednesday after tampering with vital official documents. The extra three days spent in the office by the disgraced official, was to enable him to sign off many controversial ‘deals’ and backdate them to prevent auditors from questioning them. In particular, the former MD is said to have used most part of Tuesday and Wednesday to approve huge loans to his favourite allies and backdated them to show that the approvals were given last year. A top source said, that in one case, the sacked MD approved a personal housing loan of N27 million to one of the heads of departments on Tuesday and backdated it to 2014 to avoid being detected as fraudulent, null and void. “I can tell you that the beneficiary of the fraudulent approval, which took place on Tuesday, two days after the MD had been removed from office, is the head of corporate department of our bank,” a senior staff of the institution said. It was gathered that apart from illicit approval of loans for close allies within the establishment, the sacked official also hurriedly granted approvals for external loans believe to have also gone to his cronies.
It was learnt that after appending his signatures to the paper, the sacked official packed away many vital official documents in several bags known locally as Ghana-Must-Go and drove off in many trucks. Aggrieved staff and external customers are said to have reported the top sacked bank boss to the Finance Minister and the EFCC, which has indicated readiness to probe the cases listed against the former official.
