Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Yemi Cardoso during a media chat with pressmen disclosed that the apex bank discovered $2.4 billion invalid forex outstanding claims which is pressuring the naira, hence causing anxiety in the currency market. He stressed that this was brought to light during an audit by Deloitte, CBN hired consultant. The Governor added that the consulting firm was able to dig up close to $2.4 billion of backlog which consists of fictitious claims, with claimants in certain cases being unable to provide import documentation.
In a further attempt to clean its house, the Apex Bank has restricted the operations of international money transfer operators (IMTOs) to only inbound transfers. The IMTOs will no longer be able to facilitate money transfers from Nigeria to other countries.
Similarly, according to the latest guidelines presented by the bank, an embargo has been placed on the dollar and other foreign currency payouts for international transactions.
This house cleaning by the CBN is coming barely a week after the naira crashed to a record low of N1,482.57/$ following strong demand on the official market, also known as NAFEM, exceeding the parallel market rates.
