The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is on the verge of an agreement over a $8.1 billion dispute with South African telecoms gaint MTN, its governor Godwin Emefiele said yesterday, declining to provide further details.
In August, the apex bank ordered MTN and its banks to bring $8.134 billion back into Nigeria, sending the company’s shares plummeting. The regulator alleged the firm had sent the funds abroad in breach of local foreign exchange (forex) regulations.
“We have held meetings with the MTN Group from South Africa and we are at the verge of announcing the resolution. I am very certain that we have reached the end of the road on this issue, and I will continue to say that the sanctity of the Certificate of Capital Importation (CCI) issued by our banks remain sacrosanct,” Emefiele said.
Aside the $8.1billion the telco allegedly ferried out of the country in breach of local forex rules, the Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation had also issued a demmand notice of $2billion allegedly to be tax debt over a period.
MTN was not immediately available for comment, had however strongly rejected doing any wrong in both instances and had dragged the Federal Government to court over the allegations.
Emefiels said the telco had submitted documents making the impending agreement possible, and that no other firm or person is being investigated for similar issues.
MTN’s latest troubles come about two years after it agreed to pay more than $1 billion to settle a dispute over subscriber identity module (SIM) cards in Nigeria, whose finances have been hit by a weak economy and volatile global oil prices.
Nigeria, which accounts for a third of MTN’s annual core profit, making it MTN’s biggest market.
MTN’s lenders – Standard Chartered, Stanbic IBTC Bank, Citibank and Diamond Bank – were also fined in connection to the money transfer.
