$17bn Oil Probe: House C’ttee Overrides Agencies Pleading Sub-judice

• Says it has powers to forge ahead
• Investigation making headway

James Emejo in Abuja

The Chairman, House of Representatives Ad hoc Committee on the missing $17 billion oil funds, Hon. Abdulrazak Namdas, on Wednesday warned agencies and companies currently pleading sub-judice and refusing to appear before the committee to give evidence of consequences, adding that it has the powers under the constitution to forge ahead with the probe irrespective of whether the matter is in court or otherwise.

Citing Section 89 of the constitution, which he said was superior to any other contravening regulation, he added that the committee, through the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice, was already aware that some of the oil companies invited had cases in the court but that the investigation into the missing oil money must continue in public interest.

His warning followed an objection by an Executive Director of Standard Chartered Bank to the committee’s request that he supplied details relating to suspicious transactions in some accounts managed by the bank and determine what the payments were meant for between 2011 and 2014.

The executive director had argued that there could be legal implications by such account holders against the bank for such disclosure without their consent or legal rights.

But his argument was weakened by the Section 89 of the Constitution which was read out to him.
However, indications also emerged that the committee might be making a headway in its findings as many company representatives have proved evasive in giving answers to issues raised by the committee at the resumed public hearing on Wednesday.

In an interview with THISDAY, Namdas said: “Most of these companies have made payments to the CBN accounts and even when you confront them on the payment they themselves made and we show them payments, they are not in a position to tell you I’m not sure, I will get back to you.

“We expect that if you are in oil and gas for several years and you’ve made some payments within this period, by the time you are shown a document, you should be in a position to at least, confirm.”

According to him, “Though some confirmed this is from them buy they don’t know what the payments stand for. And that’s why we are investigating because we realised there are some payments that have been made. For example, they’ll tell you we will pay for petroleum profit tax and FIRS will tell you that from their own records, they’ve not paid and we’ve cause to even show them FIRS records for 2014.

“A company said they’ve paid to FIRS the petroleum profit tax but FIRS has shown us the number of companies that have actually paid, their names are not on the list. And we then ask, where is the assessment notice given to you and they said they can’t produce it.

“But I think truly, we are making a headway; people can’t escape paying royalties. We’ve realised that we have issues, but this committee is not just set up for the sake of setting up, we can confirm certainly that people are evading answers because this has to do with oil and gas and, Nigeria is their core area in terms of generation of revenue and therefore would not continue to play with that.”