Recently, there have been reports in the Nigerian press on how school fees and medical treatments have been the problems of forex scarcity in Nigeria. What most Nigerians do not know has been the calculated attempt by powerful forces to manipulate the press in order to divert attention from major FX malpractices going on in the country.
According to this leaked documents which were obtained from highly reliable sources in the financial services industry, big companies like Dangote have been collecting approvals from the CBN to buy dollars from the interbank market for the expansion of their plants in other countries but then go on to use that approval to buy FX from the official market through Form A.
Form As are normally used for transactions like school fees, etc but what these companies do is to export our FX and roundtrip back to the country through shadow corporations based in Dubai amongst others.
The leaked documents purportedly show Dangote cement getting CBN approvals for Dollars for the following expansion projects –
1. Zambia Expansion – US$353,000,000.00 and EUR22,000,000.00 (three hundred and fifty three million dollars and twenty two million euros respectively)
2. Liberia expansion – US$100,000,000.00 (one hundred million dollars only)
3. Senegal Expansion – US$201,000,000.00 (two hundred and one million dollars only)
4. Other countries that similar funds have been taken out illegally include Congo, Cameroon amongst others
Whilst the CBN clearly states in its approval that only interbank funds should be used and not official market funds, FX allocation publications by the banks not only show that they used official funds but that they also used Form A to ensure non-traceability of the funds
What is the benefit of these outflows to the country, if any?
It is almost certain that profits are not repatriated back to the country so what drives this policy?
Source: Reports Afrique
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