The governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Olayemi Cardoso, said the Deloitte audit revealed that $2.4 billion out of the reported $7 billion of outstanding foreign exchange liabilities of the federal government are not valid for settlement.
Cardoso made this revelation in an interview with Arise Television on Monday.
He disclosed that the bank had settled verified FX requests, which amounted to $2.3 billion.
The CBN governor added that the current total outstanding FX obligations stood at $2.2 billion.
Cardoso further indicated that part of the $7 billion in outstanding FX claims was fraudulent, citing the outcome of a forensic audit by Deloitte Management Consultant, which was commissioned by the apex bank.
The CBN governor said he was confident that the outstanding FX liabilities would be addressed shortly.
Cardoso assured Nigerians that CBN would not pay for FX requests that were not validly constituted, adding that the bank has written to authorised dealers to explain the disparities identified.
He said, “And sadly, quite frankly, I think much of those have not been disputed to our satisfaction.
“The result that came out of this was startling in a great respect; it was quite startling. We discovered that of the roughly $7 billion, about $2.4 had issues, which we believed had no business being there, and the infractions from that ranged from so many things.
“For example, not having valid import documents, and in some cases, even entities that did not exist, and in some cases, beneficiaries and account parties that asked for FX and got more than they asked for.
“And those who didn’t even ask for any and got. So, there were a whole load of infractions there, which I said amounted to about $2.4 billion out of the $7 billion headline figure.”