The Chairman of Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Abdulrasheed Bawa, has revealed how the anti-graft agency last week recovered over N1 billion cash sitting in one bank account from a civil servant.
The EFCC boss disclosed this while appearing before the Senate Committee on Finance investigating the Internally Generated Revenue and payment of 1 % stamp duty by contractors on all contracts awarded by MDAs between 2014- 2020.
He said: “There are a lot of leakages we need to block, it is not about generating revenue, we have recovered over a billion from a civil servant sitting in an account last week.”
Bawa applauded the Senate Committee on Finance for its investigations into the internally generated revenues of MDAs and the payment of 1% Stamp Duty by contractors on all contracts awarded by MDAs between2014-2020.
“After observing the proceedings and the process of investigation of the Committee, I am happy with what is happening here. It is a good development that the committee is working towards blocking revenue leakages. At this point in the nation’s history, it is not much about generating revenue as much as blocking leakages of revenue generated and still being generated by all these agencies of government” he stated.
Bawa said he would have been happy to go away with one of the heads of agencies immediately from the revelations that the Committee unearthed in the course of observing the documents presented by the agency, stressing that he would be ready to partner with the committee as the process goes on and hopefully get the report of the committee for further action.
As part of setting example for blockage of leakages, he stated that since his assumption of office, he has created four new departments in EFCC, two of which, namely, the Procurement Department and the Internal Audit are to ensure that due process is followed and there are no audit queries adding that other MDAs can copy the template of EFCC.