Fuel subsidy: N232b collected illegally, says Okonjo Iweala

Culled from the Citizen 

Finance Minister and coordinating minister of Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said on Monday that 50 oil marketers fraudulently collected N232 billion from the Federal Government as fuel subsidy.
The government, she said, had recovered only N29 billion through debt swap.
According to her, a forensic investigation carried out by the government revealed the whooping subsidy fraud.
The Minister, who spoke at the 18th Nigerian Economic Summit meeting in Abuja, said the government engaged 20 forensic experts, examiners and auditors from PriceWaterHouse Coopers and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and they have worked for more than four months on the subsidy claims.
“Last week, the work was submitted to Mr. President and of the amount verified, they have determined N232 billion. You know they came out with N270 billion initially; now they are out with N232 billion claims of oil subsidy that are not substantiated or fraudulent.”
She said on the strength of the forensic investigation, the government had started to recover the claims from the affected marketers.
She vowed that the government would recover the cash fraudulently obtained through subsidy claims.
Okonjo-Iweala regretted that the forensic investigation and the government’s resolve to hold indicted marketers to account had slowed down the oil importation programme.
She, however, stressed that government had continued to pay genuine subsidy claims to petroleum marketers.
“We are going through forensic investigation because it is the kind of work that requires indepth investigation and that is because we want to do a thorough job on the matter because Nigerians want government to take corruption out of the way so that we can be like other nations of the world where things are done properly,” Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala said.
The presidential task force headed by Access Bank Managing Director Aigboje Aig-Imoukuede and the National Assembly probe have verified slightly more than N3 trillion , but government decided to subject the reports to forensic examinations.
At a news conference, also in Abuja yesterday, Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala said the government had released N170 billion as cash backing for the fourth quarter of Budget 2012.
“On the issue of cash backing for the fourth quarter; as you know, we released N300 billion last quarter for a total of N1.01 trillion in releases and it was said that we have not cash-backed the fourth quarter
“This is not correct; we have cash-backed N170bn of the fourth quarter release. About N111billion of that has gone straight into the accounts of Ministries, Department and Agencies as cash.”