How we recovered N1.6 bn illegal bank charges from a commercial banks

Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun has revealed that ₦1.6 billion illegal bank charges have been recovered from one of the branches of a commercial bank.

The minister while speaking during an investigative public hearing organized by the House of Representatives into the status of Treasury Single Account TSA disclosed that another ₦600m was recovered from some money deposit banks in continuation of the TSA policy.

Adeosun further revealed that the fund was illegally taken by the bank as excess charges on the accounts they maintained for government agencies in the pre-TSA era.

Adeosun said the recovered funds was part of the ongoing mopping up of government funds in various accounts.

“WE GOT THE N600M RECENTLY, WHICH WAS FOR CHARGES BY THESE BANKS. IT WAS RETURNED AND WE ARE STILL ON IT.”

She also said some accounts operated by Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and West African School Certificate (WAEC) were exempted from the TSA because of the nature of their operations.

Recently the Accountant- General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris, had disclosed that the Treasury Single Account (TSA) has so far consolidated over 20,000 accounts.

The TSA was set up by the Federal Government to ensure that all revenue receipts and payments are done through a Consolidated Revenue Account (CRA) at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)

Currently, government Ministries, Departments, and Agencies remit their revenue collections to the CRA through their individual commercial banks on a fee-for-service remuneration basis.