Reps summon Customs boss over N200bn insurance fund
THE House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee investigating cash paid out to government officials annually by insurance companies has summoned the Controller General of Customs, CGC, for allegedly refusing to furnish it with details of its insurance transactions between 2013 and 2015.
The Adekunle Akinlade Abdulkadir-led Committee which last week queried insurance companies for insuring dysfunctional coaches for Nigeria Railways Corporation, NRC, had invited the Nigeria Customs Service, NCS, to appear last Friday over the insurance transactions in the last four years, but the Customs representatives failed to turn up.
The Committee which is also probing the alleged misappropriation of over N200 billion of public funds in insurance transactions at the sitting, uncovered a scheme involving the payment of over N910million to two unregistered insurance brokers.
Disclosing this at the investigative hearing, Chairman of the Committee, Abdulkadir, expressed disappointment over how insurance firms attempted to misinform it through distortion of facts in their presentations.
According to him, “The issue is that these companies got business consistently just because some people in the MDAs are being paid.
“Since the commencement of this investigation, we have sent invitations to the NCS but they have refused to make any submission to the Committee.
“We are summoning the CG to explain why he refused to honour the Committee and why it engaged services of unlicensed brokers and agents that cost over a quarter of a billion Naira.
“Many of the insurance companies that appeared deliberately gave us wrong information thinking we can never go to the extent of scrutinising every detail in their submissions.
“Having discovered that it is not business as usual, all the Chief Executives are now saying they did not know about the figures quoted in the documents they submitted.
“What they want now is to give us (Committee) new figures because the earlier ones were no longer correct.
“We will oblige them but in their new submissions, every cover must be accompanied by relevant documents to prove the authenticity of the new figures.”
Source _vanguard
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