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By Steve Agbota
The acting President of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Dr. Kayode Farinto has said the customs brokers may be forced to suspend their operations with the Guarantee Trust Bank (GTB) following the suspension of the bank from collection of duties on imported cargoes at Nigerian ports.
Recall that the National Public Relations Officer of Nigeria Customs Service, Deputy Comptroller Timi Bomodi had said the bank was on temporary suspension on orders of the National Assembly from collecting duties on imported cargoes.
However, in a chat with Daily Sun, the acting President of ANLCA, Farinto confirmed that the bank was suspended owing to non-remittance of money collected from clearing agents on behalf of the Federal Government.
He said the act is a criminal offence, this is even as he threatened that the customs brokers may be forced to invite the Economic Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) to look into the issue.
Following the suspension of the bank, he revealed that over N20 billion has been lost, adding that if by Monday the issue is not resolved, the customs brokers would stage a 1000 walk to the bank corporate headquarters in Lagos.
“We need to correct this impression, because GT bank has succeeded in feeding the public with false news. What we noticed is a financial shenanigan on the part of the bank. It is not even customs that suspended them, it was a directive from the National Assembly based on investigation and what it translate to is that in the course of reconciliation GT bank has not remitted some large amount of money to the federation account and they have collected it on behalf of the Federal Government and that is a criminal offense and that is why we will be inviting the EFCC to come to look into this issue.
“Enough of making Nigerian importers and freight forwarders to suffer unnecessarily and that is why we are not going to take it likely. If by Monday, they are not called back into the system, we are going to make sure that by Tuesday morning we will call our freight forwarders not to do transactions with GT bank again, they should close their account. We will make sure we mobilize more than 1000 freight forwarders to go to their corporate headquarters.
“This has impacted negatively on the economy of the country. As we discuss, consignments that have collected their Form M and have their PAAR through GT bank are unable to move forward, they are stocked and likewise vehicles that have made their assessment because they have been suspended from finance in the system.
“This is a very big loss to us because demurrages and storages are accumulated. We are calling on all our chairmen in all the ports to collate all demurrages, transactions that have to do with GT bank. We are going to send a serious letter to EFCC to investigate this and in the national interest, let the world know that this is a financial indiscipline and they should go down for it.
“Unfortunately, I was told that some directors in CBN should be culpable, if a bank collects duty and charges on behalf of the nation and that money is not remitted, it is the responsibilities of CBN to make sure that there is financial discipline on that commercial bank and this has not been done, and we are not sure if those remittance were done, it could even be they’ve not done any remittance since last year or even six months ago,” he stated.
According to him, this is criminal and an act of sabotage in line with the Act that establishes EFCC, saying it is their responsibility to dabble into the issue, investigate it and let people know what is happening.
When asked to quantify the loss, he said: “If we want to qualify the financial loss accrued, there is no way it will not be less than N20 billion because if you want to look at it, you look at the issue of storage, demurrage and the inconveniences that people will not be able to carry their cargo.
“And some of these cargoes may be on loan and the loan will be running so it can’t be less than N20 billion. We appreciate the National Assembly for this and appeal to NCS to look for a solution in the interest of trade facilitation. It becomes exigent on their part to do that.
“We are not saying that they should cancel assessments done, there should be a bypass on how the problem can be solved in the interim pending when it is resolved. We will be calling on importers for now to discontinue any service or transaction with GT bank until the issue is resolved and until we know what actually transpired. We are also calling on the National Assembly to let us know how many banks that are culpable in the area of this financial irregularities and indiscipline,” he said.
