The Senate yesterday said that arrangements had been concluded to hand over companies found culpable in its investigation into alleged N30 trillion revenue scam in the import and export value chain to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for prosecution.
The Chairman, Joint Committee on Customs, Excise and Tariff and Marine Transport, Senator Hope Uzodinma (PDP, Imo West), in Abuja said that those to be handed over to the EFCC were found to have manipulated the foreign exchange procedure and also involved in money laundering, round-tripping and abuse of foreign exchange manual.
Uzodinma, while stressing that the committee would pass all established evidences against the companies to the commission for immediate prosecution, said that companies with established cases of infractions would be referred to the Nigeria Customs Service for blacklisting.
He said: “We have also established another department of the investigation, which is abuse of fiscal policies from Federal Ministry of Finance. Most of these companies that have applied and got approval as manufacturers of different products, assemblers of various products but import finished goods in the name of CKD, will be charged for economic crime.
“We are going to follow up the prosecution with all evidence available to us. As we are about concluding our investigation on the 60 selected companies being currently investigated, it is very clear that so much collectable revenues are still hanging, monies government would have used to ease governance and provide necessary infrastructure and amenities to the citizenry.”
On the funds recovered so far, Uzodinma noted that a significant amount of money had been returned by some of the companies. “Many of those companies have paid partially. I know that with the evidences we have against them, we are confident that these companies are now aware that we caught them. We cannot let go of what belongs to government,” he said.