Forensic expert, others accuse banks of ‘constitutionalised stealing’

A forensic accountant, Mr. Ori Adeyemo, has said that many Nigerian banks are involved in illegal businesses, a situation he describes as ‘constitutionalised stealing.’
Adeyemo, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Forensic Consulting, said the Treasury Single Account had exposed the illiquidity state of the banks.
He spoke with our correspondent in Lagos over the weekend.
He expressed the belief that even the end of year earnings of the banks were not also legitimate.
He said, “What all the banks are doing is round-tripping, which is not healthy for the growth of the economy. The implication of all this is that they are killing the economy and polluting the naira. There is a lot of cases against them in court. I have several cases of fraud totaling over N1 trillion in several courts in Lagos.”
In the same vein, a professor of economics, Mr. Johnson Okedo, told The Point that many banks had taken advantage of the system and the teeming unsuspecting Nigerians to perfect their antics, especially in the area of illegal deductions on bank customers’ accounts, and those who stake and trade their life earnings in the forex market daily.
Such transactions, according to the analyst, include creating an artificial scarcity of the dollar, which enables the banks to sell the foreign currency at higher rates, and taking advantage of the huge forex gaps between the official and parallel markets by selling foreign exchange sourced from the Central Bank of Nigeria at the black market to make gains.
“These are some of the illegal ways most banks generate funds,” he noted.
Recall that some of the banks had, in the past, been fingered and investigated by the CBN on issues of round-tripping and taking advantage of the huge forex gaps between the official and parallel markets to make a fortune.
A former President, Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, Mr. Chidi Ajaegbu, also said that there was nothing wrong with banks making gains from forex but fleecing customers was wrong.
He said, “It is just an indication of a distorted economy and there is nothing anybody can do about it. And if for any reason, it went the other way against them, they would have also reported a huge loss.”