SCANDAL: House Starts Investigation Of NNPC’s $6.8bn Fraud

The House of Representatives, yesterday, commenced the investigation into alleged illegal activities of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, with Vitol and Transfigura Commodity Trading Firms.

oil_importThis was sequel to a motion entitled Urgent Need to Investigate the Alleged Connivance of the Nigerian National Corporation, NNPC, with Swiss Oil Dealers to Rob Nigeria Billion of Dollars, moved by Abiodun Balogun (APC, Ogun State).

Balogun, in his prayers, said that the secrecy surrounding NNPC activities and the oil industry in general was recently blown open by a new report of the Berne Declaration, a Swiss non-government advocacy organisation that gave account of a series of illegal practices involving NNPC, which also allegedly connived with major Swiss oil trading companies to have stolen billions of dollars from Nigeria be selling crude oil below the market value.

According to the report, NNPC has so far duped the country of 6.8 billion dollars through some “Letter Box Companies.”

The lawmaker claims that Nigeria is the only major oil producer to sell 100 % of its crude to private traders rather than in the open market, which would enable it benefit from the resulting added value with the greatest number of beneficiaries of export allocations.

Another issue of concern is the fact that NNPC have not published their financial details since 2005.

Thus, the House ordered its standing committees on Petroleum Resources (Upstream), Petroleum Resources (Downstream) and Justice to probe all issues mentioned in the report within four weeks.

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