Nigeria: Fuel Subsidy - Massive Fraud, Messy Fight - 0 views
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Jaqui Romaine on 29 Aug 12ANALYSIS Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala's resolve to isolate fraudulent oil marketers in payment of fuel subsidy, based on a report of an investigation panel, had a backlash last week. Though NUPENG has returned to work, there are fears that difficult times lay ahead. A typical scenario of how pockets government funds were pumped into the tanks of oil marketers in the name of subsidy goes thus: "Conoil imported 19.820 million litres of PMS (petrol) with Form M No.1078673 and mother vessel bill of lading dated 31/08/2011 for which N1,532,684,020.31 was paid subsidy. This payment was made ahead of external auditors' verification in line with the PPPRA procedure; however external auditors did not subsequently verify the claim. Discussion with PPPRA showed this payment was yet to be verified by the external auditors due to their error in sending the verification request to Akintola Williams Delloite instead of Adekanola & Co who witnessed the vessel discharge. Akintola Williams Delloite returned the request unsigned and before they could be sent to Adekanola for their signature, both firms had been disengaged from further participation in the subsidy payment process. "Differences were noted between the observed volume of litres in the shore tank certificates and the volume in litres used to calculate the subsidies claimed. This is in violation of the requirement of the PSF guidelines that the volume of products for which subsidy is paid should be paid based on duly signed shore tank certificates. The total value of the overpayment in this respect was N33,383,300.79." The scene above was real, according to the report of the Federal Ministry of Finance subsidy claims verification committee headed by the Group Managing Director of Access Bank Plc, Mr Aigboje I. Aig-Imoukhuede. Here we observe the lack of due diligence on the part of the Petroleum Products Pricing and Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), which made payments when external auditors and independent