Rewane tells Tinubu, using EFCC to chase innocent BDCs is illegal
By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
Bismarck Rewane, Financial Derivatives Company (FDC) Chief Executive Officer, has advised President Bola Tinubu to stop chasing shadows by using the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to clampdown on Bureau de Change (BDC) operators in the bid to stop naira depreciation.
EFCC personnel last week raided BDC operators in Abuja, Lagos, Kano, and Ibadan over naira fluctuations against United States dollar in the foreign exchange (forex) market.
“You can fake news but you cannot fake prosperity,” Rewane, an economist, had counselled Tinubu earlier this.
He voiced his latest concern on Channels Television, describing as “doom” the EFCC raids on BDCs on the orders of the federal government.
BDCs not to blame for poor forex policies
Rewane explained BDCs operate within the ambit of forex law and should not be made the scapegoats for naira bashing cause by government policies.
“Stop all the chasing of shadows, BDCs, by EFCC officers. What crime is being committed? The foreign exchange law allows ‘willing buyer and will seller’, and nobody is mutilating the currency,” he said.
“The earlier we stop doing doom things, the better for the economy. Let us be more cautious and reasonable because we cannot use one solution to create another problem.”
Naira now hovers around N1,900 to the dollar and more than N2,000 to pound sterling.
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Bode George blames banks’ round tripping for forex crisis
Meanwhile, Abuja is yet to act on the information supplied earlier this year by Bode George, former Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Vice Chairman (South West), that banks are responsible for the forex crisis through dollar roundtripping.
George had made the disclosure before the death on February 9 of Herbert Wigwe, Group Chief Executive Officer of Access Bank Holding Company – and the video reemerged after Wigwe’s death in a helicopter crash in California, United States.
In the video, George spoke on the alleged illegal acts committed by former Central Bank of Nigeria Governor (CBN) Godwin Emefiele, saying Emefiele played a significant role in corruptly enriching Wigwe and Tony Elumelu, United Bank for Africa (UBA) Chairman.
“How can an MD? Who the heck is Elumelu? What did he do? Where is his factory? George wondered.
“He was a bank man, a floor bank man who somehow got licensed. At the same time, there was Adeola. All of them are stupendously wealthy now.”
“Wigwe, who became MD of Access Bank immediately after the other man left, has now established a university.
“He has the temerity to advertise that university on CNN. Wigwe University. That was personally established by him.
“Where is the money? Where is the factory? Access Bank.”
“What is the practice? They [the CBN] release dollars to them (their banks) once every month they use the dollars.
“If it is 1 to 200, they’ll get the Mallams (black marketers) to say 1 to 200. You see that profit; what do they do with it? Who are the commercial people that need it and get it?”
George said people hardly get dollars from the banks unless they are highly placed in society, and the unavailability of dollars in banks forces people to patronise black marketers.
He urged Abuja to invite Wigwe [before his death] and Elumelu to discuss what “they have done to this nation because the rottenness started from there and has been going on for years.”