*Recovers N3.3bn belonging to NHIS held in banks since 2015
Kingsley Nwezeh in Abuja
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), weekend, denied raiding the residence of the presidential candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Bola Ahmed Tinubu and recovering some N400 billion.
The commission, in another statement, signed by its Spokesman, Wilson Uwujaren, however, disclosed that the anti-graft agency had recovered N3.3 billion belonging to the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) and fraudulently held by some banks.
However, the EFCC statement said reports that the agency conducted a raid on Tinubu’s residence was unfounded.
“The attention of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has been drawn to a report circulating in the social media, claiming that operatives of the commission raided the home of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, standard-bearer of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in the forthcoming presidential elections and recovered a humongous sum of N400 billion.
“The commission wishes to state that no such operation was carried out by the EFCC. The public is enjoined to disregard the report as fake news,” it said.
Meanwhile, in a separate statement, the agency said it recovered an additional sum of N900 million for the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).
It said the sum was part of monies which some deposit money banks fraudulently withheld since 2015 and refused to remit into the NHIS’ Treasury Single Account (TSA).
“The recovered funds were released to NHIS on February 8, 2023, two days shy of one year, when the commission, on February 10, 2022, also released the sum of N1billion recovered from the banks to the NHIS. This is in addition to the N1.4 billion earlier released to the scheme on August 5, 2022”, it said.
The commission noted that, the Executive Secretary of NHIS, Professor Muhammad Sambo, had, on July 29, 2021, commended the commission for assisting the scheme in the recovery of funds fraudulently trapped in the vaults of some commercial banks.
