By AHMED MUSA, Abuja

The House of Representatives’ Joint Committee on Finance, as well as Banking and Currency, will engage 24 commercial and non-commercial banks and 14 international oil companies (IOCs) over an alleged loss of over $30 billion revenue annually due to leakages.

Jointly chaired by Rep. Abiodun James Faleke (APC, Lagos) and Rep. Victor Nwokolo (PDP, Delta), the joint committee, will engage officials of the banks and the IOCs during an investigative hearing, which kicks off on Monday.

The banks and the oil companies are to explain their roles in the alleged over revenue leakages amounting to $30bn arising from oil revenue interest payment on account of foreign currency dominated contracts by companies in engineering, procurement, construction, installation and marine transportations.

According to communications from the joint panel, the investigative hearing is to be conducted based on the COVID-19 protocols, as well as in phases, with the first phase of the hearing billed to last for three weeks.

The House had on March 5, 2020, passed a resolution mandating the two committees to carry out the investigation following the adoption of a motion by Faleke.

The House had in the motion expressed concern that the billions of dollars revenue leakages may have been due to tax evasion, malpractices, misuse and diversion of foreign exchange allocations by companies and other entities.

In adopting the motion, the House said it would also investigate the disbursement of foreign exchange by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and other agencies to determine the exact amount government may have lost in the process.

The House noted that the leakages arose from various malpractices in foreign exchange allocation to companies from sources such as CBN, interbank, domiciliary and over the counter purchases for importation of physical goods, payments of foreign service vendors, dividend repatriation and foreign loans.

The Joint Committee’s mandate include to determine in a statutory and in a professional manner, the revenue amount involved in the malpractices by each organization based on every revenue line item collectible by government agencies for the purpose of timely recovery into government accounts.

“There is the urgent need to rescue the country from over $30billion dollars annual revenue leakages arising from tax evasion, malpractices, mis-use and diversion of foreign exchange allocations by companies and other entities,” Faleke had said in March, while leading debate on the motion.

Banks to be engaged by the Joint Committee starting from Monday include Unity Bank, Stanbic IBTC, UBA, Polaris Bank, FCMB, Fidelity Bank, Keystone Bank, FBN Merchant, Access Bank and the Bank of Industry.

The remaining banks are Jaiz Bank, Coronation Bank, SunTrust Bank, Union Bank, Citi Bank, GTB, EcoBank, First Bank, FSDH Merchant, Sterling Bank, Zenith Bank, Wema Bank, Standard Chartered Bank and Heritage Bank.

As for oil companies, they include Nigeria Agip Exploration (NAE), Nigeria Agip Oil Company (NAOC), PAN Ocean Oil Nigeria Limited, Shell Nigeria Exploration & Producing Company Limited, Esso Exploration & Producing Nigeria Limited and Mobile Producing Nigeria Limited.

Others are Statoil Company Limited, Shell Petroleum Development Company, Star Deep Water Petroleum Nigeria Limited and Total E&P Nigeria Limited, Total Upstream Nigeria Limited, Sterling Oil Exploration Energy Limited, Addax Petroleum Development Company Limited and Addax Exploration Limited. (Sunday Independent)