The House of Representatives’ Ad-hoc Committee investigating tax deductions, sundry charges, and multiple bank fees has given Nigerian commercial banks four days to submit all requested documents.
The committee also insisted on the appearances of the Chief Executive Officers CEOs of these financial institutions at the investigative hearing and rejected representatives of any bank CEO without an authorisation letter to the panel.
Chairman of the House Committee, Mr Kelechi Nwogu, in a remark at the commencement of the House panel session in Abuja, said that the House probe panel is mandated to ensure that all deductions of charges by banks on customers’ accounts are fair and used rightly.
He stated that the Committee had extended an invitation to the Ministry of Finance, the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation (OAGF), the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission EFCC and commercial banks operating in Nigeria for the investigation.
The House Committee Chairman and some members who rejected representation of the CEOs of GT Bank, Zenith Bank, Access Bank and other commercial banks cannot hold water as they insisted that they must appear before the panel unfailingly.
“You cannot appear here without an identity. We are not here on our own. We are here on the mandate of the people who elected us into parliament.
“We have resolved to meet next week on Wednesday. You must submit all requested documents on or before Monday.
“We will go through all the documents, and we will put you on oath.
“It will not be well if we invite you here again and you tell us the same story. We have given a deadline that any bank that fails to submit the requested documents on Monday must be sanctioned,” Mr Nworgu said.
The House Committee Chairman said that the House panel is not leaving any stone unturned to unravel why the commercial banks engage in spurious deductions of charges on their customers’ accounts.
The committee members during the investigation said that the commercial banks are perpetrating illegality by deducting inexplicable charges from civil servants’, public servants’ and other customers’ bank accounts without remittances.
Other members of the panel, notably Mr Chidi Mark Obeta, Mr Dominic Okafor, and other members, while speaking in support of the committee decision, demanded that the bank chief executive officers must appear before the panel unfailingly.