Aso Savings may collapse like other 158 MFBs if FG recovers all held funds—Analysts
Not up to one month after the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) disclosed that about 182 financial institutions including 158 Micro Finance Banks (MFBs) and 22 Finance Houses have collapsed and their licences withdrawn, there are fears that one of the acclaimed strongest MFBs, Aso Savings and Loans Plc., may be on the line.
This stemmed from two angles of discoveries. First, by the House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee investigating the management, implementation and level of compliance with the Treasury Single Account (TSA), discovered N21 billion and $104.46 million undeclared revenue in two separate accounts outside the Treasury Single Account (TSA) by Heritage Bank and Aso Savings & Loans Plc.
Addressing the media last week, chairman of the Ad-hoc Committee, Abubakar Danburam, said the Managing Director of Heritage Bank, Ifie Sekibo, and his counterpart in Aso Savings, Hassan Usman, having failed to appear after an initial invitation, will be re-invited on another date, failing which they will be declared wanted.
According to him, failing to appear in the next time will be followed with issuance of arrest warrant.
Secondly, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) has on its different investigation, discovered the sum of N9.8bn secretly kept in Aso Savings & Loans for close to 10 years.
ICPC said findings by its department revealed that the amount was the proceeds from the sale of Federal Government properties in the Federal Capital Territory between 2010 and 2014.
Image-maker of the Commission, Mrs Rasheedat Okoduwa, averred that the discovery was made while investigating allegations contained in a petition against the activities of the Ad-hoc Committee set up in 2005 on the sales.
She revealed that ICPC investigators smoked out the N9.8bn which was deposited in Aso Savings and Loans Plc was not remitted to the federal treasury by the financial institution rather, it was used it.
Industry analysts say though the bank has put an option of swapping some of its properties located in Abuja and Lagos in exchange for the unremitted N9.8bn, it was not clear if it can also do same on the $104.46m yet to be returned to the Treasury Single Account (TSA).
The bank, according to ICPC, is currently experiencing paucity of funds which led to the option of property swap that is yet to be agreed upon by the anti-graft agency.
However, Okoduwa affirmed the commitment of ICPC to the recovery of the full value of the unremitted N9.8 Billion by taking the properties offered in lieu for government, subject to satisfactory valuation by the Ministry of Power, Works and Housing.
ICPC added that chances of prosecuting the bank even after recovering the trapped funds are not ruled out for now.
She further disclosed that apart from the discovery of the unremitting fund, investigation of the Ad-hoc committee’s work also uncovered that some persons who were allocated government properties on part payments who are yet to complete their payments are not being worried to pay up which can be interpreted as abuse of terms and conditions of operating licence.
