Emefiele Speaks On Blocking Bank Accounts Of Companies Allegedly Cheating The Economy

Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)‘s governor, Godwin Emefiele has noted that the bank has identified smuggling and dumping as the biggest problem Nigeria’s economic policies has been facing adding that some companies’ bank accounts have been blocked.

This Emefiele said while speaking at a consultative roundtable with some economic stakeholders in Lagos titled, “Going for Growth”.

Emefiele said, “We have identified smugglers and people dumping goods as those who sabotage those policies and we decided that we will deal with them. The strategy that we came up with is that we will not bother ourselves with them.

“There is an agency of government that is responsible for border control and if these people pass through the border control we would use the instrumentality of being the regulator of the banking system to make sure that we get the banks to provide all details about them.

“We investigate their accounts and if they are found in economic sabotage, boarding, smuggling and dumping in Nigeria, we would not only block their accounts, we would close their accounts in all the Nigerian banks simultaneously.”

The bank chief said CBN in due course would come up with the names of those that had been identified, adding that it had ordered commercial banks to close the accounts of all the culprits.

“We want to be sure that we come up with something that is credible and cannot be denied. At this stage, we have already blocked the accounts of some in the textile, rice and palm oil companies.

“We are investigating those accounts and as information becomes clearer, we can clearly say that they committed the offense. We would then go to the next level which is to forbid any Nigerian bank from maintaining accounts for these people,” he said.