Adedayo Akinwale and Udora Orizu in Abuja
The House of Representatives has threatened to issue warrants of arrest on the Director of the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) and the Managing Director of the National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS) over their failure to submit documents before the House Joint Committees on Finance, Banking and Currency, which is conducting investigative hearing into the alleged $30 billion annual revenue leakages by multinational oil companies.
This was made known yesterday by the Chairmen of both Committees on Finance, Mr. James Faleke and Banking and Currency, Mr. Victor Nwokolo.
The House had at the plenary on March 5, 2020, mandated its joint committees to conduct a public hearing to ascertain the abuse of billions of dollars in foreign allocation to companies for the purpose of payment of foreign vendors.
The committees were also mandated to go through various originating documents maintained by Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the deposit money banks, forex dealers, the Federal Inland Revenue Services (FIRS) and other beneficiary companies.
Other companies and agencies expected to present documents are; PAN Ocean Oil Nigeria Ltd, Statoil Company Ltd, Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company Ltd, Pipeline and Product Marketing Company (PPMC), Addax Petroleum Development Company Ltd, Chevron, Sterling Oil Exploration, Heritage Oil Exploration and a host of others.
Faleke told to the press that several letters have been written to the aforementioned agencies and organisations, which were not honoured.
He said: ‘’The multinational companies are also accused of tax evasion, malpractices, misuse and diversion of foreign exchange allocations. The joint committees have given the organisations seven days to furnish the committee with details of documents required or face arrest in line with the constitutional provision.’’
