Oluyinka Onigbinde
The acting president of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA); Dr. Kayode Farinto has said the customs brokers may be forced to suspend operations with Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB), following the suspension of the bank from collection of duties on imported cargoes at Nigerian ports.
The National Public Relations Officer of Nigeria Customs Service, Deputy Comptroller Timi Bomodi had said that, the bank was on temporary suspension on the orders of the National Assembly.
However, in a chat with our correspondent, the acting president of ANLCA confirmed that the GT Bank was suspended owing to non-remittance of money collected from clearing agents on behalf of the federal government.
He said the act is a criminal offence, this is even as he threatened that customs brokers may be forced to invite the Economic Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) to look into the issue.
Farinto informed that following the suspension of the bank, more than 20 Billion has been lost while adding that if by Monday (August 29) the issue is not resolved, the customs brokers will stage a 1000-man walk to the bank corporate headquarters in Lagos.
He said: “We need to correct this impression, because GT bank has succeeded in feeding the public with false news. What we noticed is a financial shenanigan on the part of the bank. It is not even customs that suspended them, it was a directive from the National Assembly based on investigation and what it translates to is that in the course of reconciliation GT bank has not remitted some large amount of money to the federation account and they have collected it on behalf of the federal government and that is a criminal offence and that is why we will be inviting the EFCC to come into this issue.
“Enough of making Nigerian importers and freight forwarders to suffer unnecessarily and that is why we are not going to take it likely.
“If by Monday, they are not called back into the system, we are going to make sure that by Tuesday morning, we will call our freight forwarders not to do transactions with GT bank again, they should close their accounts. We will make sure we mobilize more than 1000 freight forwarders to go to their corporate headquarters. “This has impacted negatively on the economy of the country.”.
He explained further that: “As we discuss, consignments that have collected their Form M and have their PAAR through GT bank are unable to move forward, they are stocked and likewise vehicles that have made their assessment because they have been suspended from finance in the system.
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“This is a very big loss to us because demurrages and storages are accumulated.
“We are calling on all our chairmen in all the ports to collate all demurrages, transactions that have to do with GT bank.
“We are going to send a serious letter to EFCC to investigate this and in the national interest, let the world know that this is a financial indiscipline and they should go down for it.
” Unfortunately, I was told that some directors in CBN should be culpable, if a bank collects duty and charges on behalf of the nation and that money is not remitted, it is the responsibilities of CBN to make sure that there is financial discipline on that commercial bank and this has not been done, and we are not sure if those remittances were done, it could even be they’ve not done any remittance since last year or even six months ago”.
When asked to quantify the loss, he said, “If we want to qualify the financial loss accrued, it will not be less than N20 billion because if you want to look at it, you look at the issue of storage, demurrage and the inconveniences that people will not be able to carry their cargo.
“And some of these cargoes may be on loan and the loan will be running so it can’t be less than N20billion”.
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