Sterling Bank, the bank that prides itself as the “one customer bank” has proven to be a less responsible corporate citizen sabotaging the ongoing currency swap as Operatives of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) have discovered the sum of Two Hundred and Fifty-Eight Million Naira (N258m) stashed in the vault at the head office of the bank in Abuja just as scarcity of new Naira notes continue to cause protests across the country.
The commission says it has arrested the Regional and Service managers of Sterling Bank Plc in the federal capital territory for hoarding the said N258 million of the new naira notes and it was the second of such expose on the bank in less than on week.
The ICPC, according to a post on its verified Twitter handle, said “this discovery followed one of the Commission’s operations at ensuring that commercial banks and other interest groups do not flout the apex bank’s directive.
When the ICPC monitoring team visited the bank and discovered the stashed new Naira notes in the bank’s vault, it was informed that the cash was the remnant of what the CBN had given the bank for onward distribution to its branches.
The team however found out that only the sum of Five Million Naira (N5m) each was distributed to their branches.
The arrested Regional and Service managers were later granted administrative bail while the investigation continues.
Last week, officials of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) discovered N6 million of the new naira notes hoarded in Sterling Bank’s Ado Ekiti branch, in Ekiti State.
It was disclosed that the fund stashed in its vault in Ado Ekiti has been in the custody of the bank for over two weeks even as customers were denied access to the new Naira notes.
In a trending video on social media, a man who identified himself as Oluwole Owoeye, a deputy director of CBN, while monitoring the distribution of the new naira notes in the state, was seen questioning the bank officials as to why they have not uploaded the funds into their Automated Teller Machines, (ATMs), despite having six of the machines in place. The CBN director also announced a fine of N1 million for each day the fund was in the bank’s custody.
