By Ishaya Ibrahim
Acting News Editor
Senior executives at the Fidelity Bank branch on Allen Avenue and its regional office in Ikeja Lagos, are in an alleged cover-up of a theft which saw a runaway personnel of the bank steal N250 million from a customer’s fixed deposit account.
The cover-up is believed to be fueled by tribal sentiments and other in-house business clique considerations in the region and branch affected by the fraud.
Two months after the fraud, TheNiche has learnt that senior personnel at the Ikeja region are pressuring investigators at the head office to overlook the matter, especially since it has not been officially escalated to the office of the bank’s Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Nnamdi Okonkwo.
The bank’s spokesperson, Charles Aigbe has consistently avoided TheNiche’s enquiry about the theft, right from when this medium exclusively broke the story on its January 19, 2018 edition.
It was gathered that the perpetrator beats security mechanisms at the Allen/Toyin branch in Ikeja Lagos State to physically bolt with the huge sum of money.
Okonkwo may not be aware that some of the business development and operational staff of the bank close to the criminally-minded staff “now at large” are major stakeholders in Bureau De Change businesses, doing Foreign Exchange (forex) deals for the bank customers against Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) rules.
TheNiche learnt that the N250million fraud had since unsettled the regional head of the bank’s operations and its branch managers.
The embattled regional head said not to be grounded yet in operational services was allegedly aiding staff pulling tribal strings to conceal the matter.
“They foresaw the impact on their jobs and advised management otherwise. The man (suspect) in question is a classmate of one of the people here in the head office that is spearheading the efforts to conceal the fraud,” our source said, adding that Fidelity Bank is also riddled with discontent from staff over their severance packages.
“During our time, we were given an opportunity after 15 years and above to exit with reasonable pay. Now, I learned that there’s nothing like that. Why won’t there be cases of fraud and side deals,” the source told our reporter in a telephone interview.
The bank’s contract-staff are also agitated over the nonexistence of exit benefits in their terms of agreement.
Fidelity Bank will next month present its financial results to shareholders. The bank plans to hold its board meeting any moment from now ahead of the reports to be submitted to the CBN.
Analysts fear that fraud of this magnitude may no doubt deplete returns that would be accruable to shareholders.
Aigbe, again, failed to return calls to his phone by this reporter as well as respond to SMS sent to him on TheNiche’s latest findings.
On January 17, 2018, when our correspondent visited the Allen branch of the bank where the alleged fraud took place, the bank’s hall was filled with customers making various transactions.
The branch manager was said not to be available when we demanded to see him.
Fidelity bank has been replete with different kinds of fraudulent cases targeted at the bank and its customers.
It has weathered the fraudulent storms in some cases.
In 2017, a former female staff, Adenike Okuneye, was arraigned before a Lagos Magistrate Court for collecting money from customers of the bank with the pretext of saving it for them in the bank even when she had ceased to be in the bank’s employ.
In October 2017, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) charged two oil services companies and their directors for allegedly defrauding the bank of over N7billion.
The fraud was perfected by the companies – Danium Energy Services Limited and Petrosol Energy – by presenting fictitious oil contract and obtaining loans to execute the said contract.
Fidelity Bank leadership is still battling to extricate itself from alleged romance with former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke in the case instituted by the EFCC with regard to several millions of naira which the anti-graft Commission believes were funneled through the bank in the build up to the 2015 general election.
