By InvestAdvocate

Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE)-Nigeria’s anti-graft agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFFC) said on Tuesday it has charged six (6) unscrupulous staff of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) over an N8 billion ($40 million) currency fraud, a Reuters report quoted Rotimi Jacobs a lawyer to the agency.

According to the report, the EFCC also charged six (6) commercial bank staff accused of currency theft and recirculating naira notes intended for destruction at a court in Ibadan.

The report quoted the EFCC Lawyer as saying that the officials had pleaded not guilty to the charges, and that the court had ordered that they be detained in prison pending their bail applications.

This is coming on the heels of the CBN announcing to the general public that it has handed over some of its unscrupulous staff to the nation’s anti-graft agency for prosecution in which mutilated higher denomination notes originally meant for destruction were swapped with lower denomination currencies by its officials and others from commercial banks.

The CBN said its Briquetting Panel comprising seniour bank staff from different branches noticed some anomalies at the Ibadan
during a routine internal audit of the bank’s cash destruction activities in September 2014.

“This practice known as interleafing, basically labels a box with a higher value than its true content,” the CBN disclosed.

The apex bank further affirmed that as soon as it concluded its internal investigations beyond reasonable doubt that some wrongdoing had occurred, the affected members of staff who are middle-level officers were, depending on gravity of offence, either summarily dismissed or immediately placed on indefinite suspension on 21 October 2014, and all handed over to the EFCC for further investigation and prosecution.