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The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Tuesday barred nine banks from the nation’s foreign exchange market for failing to remit the sum of $2.334bn belonging to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation to the Treasury Single Account (TSA).
The banks are:
- First Bank of Nigeria Limited ($469m)
- Diamond Bank Plc ($287m)
- Sterling Bank Plc ($269m)
- Skye Bank Plc ($221m)
- Fidelity Bank ($209m)
- United Bank for Africa ($530m)
- Keystone Bank ($139)
- First City Monument Bank (FCMB) $125m
- Heritage Bank ($85m).
The sanction would remain until the banks could remit the funds to the CBN although some more disciplinary actions could still be meted out to the banks.
President Muhammad Buhari had last September ordered all Deposit Money Banks in the country to remit all Federal Government funds to the TSA.
However, the Head, Corporate Communications, UBA, Mr. Charles Aigbe, said the bank was not among the banks sanctioned by the CBN.
In a statement issued on Tuesday, Aigbe said,
“Our attention has been drawn to report of the ban of UBA from the foreign exchange market by the CBN over the non-remittance of the NNPC/NLNG dollar deposits.
“We wish to state very categorically that UBA has completely remitted all the NNPC/NLNG dollar deposits. We thank all our numerous customers, business partners and other. stakeholders who have reached out to us on account of this report.”