By Gift Chapi Odekina
The House of Representatives on Tuesday threatened to issue warrants of arrest on the Director of Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), the managing director National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS) over failure to submit documents before the House joint Committees on Finance, banking and currency on the investigative hearing into the alleged N30 billion dollar annual revenue leakages by multinational oil companies.
Other companies and agencies expected to present documents are; PAN Ocean Oil Nigeria Ltd, Statoil Company Ltd, Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company Ltd, Pipeline and Product Marketing Company (PPMC), Addax Petroleum Development Company Ltd, Chevron, sterling oil exploration, heritage oil exploration and a host of others.
This was made known by the Chairmen of both Committees on Finance, Mr. James Faleke and (APC, Lagos)and Banking and Currency Victor Nwokolo on Tuesday.
Hon. Faleke explained to the press that several letters have been written to the aforementioned agencies and organisations which were not honoured.
“According to the chairman, the multinational companies are also accused of tax evasion, malpractices, misuse and diversion of foreign exchange allocations”.
“The joint Committees have given the organisations seven days to furnish the Committee with details of documents required or face arrest in line with the Constitutional provision”
Recall that the House at plenary on 5 of March, 2020 mandated its joint Committees on Finance to conduct a public hearing to ascertain the abuse of billions of dollars in foreign allocation to companies for the purpose of payment of foreign vendors, the various originating documents maintained by Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Deposit Money Banks, Forex Dealers, Federal Inland Revenue Services (FIRS) and other beneficiary companies.
