The Group Managing Director, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Dr Maikanti Baru, on Tuesday said the corporation had recovered 1.6 billion dollars from some companies fleecing one of its subsidiaries.
NAN reports that Baru disclosed this while fielding questions from newsmen after a visit by officials of the Chartered Institute of Forensic and Investigative Professionals of Nigeria (CIFIPN) in Abuja.
The Institute conferred an award of Honourary Fellow and Patron on Baru and solicited partnership with the corporation during the visit.
CIFIPN is an anti-fraud organisation saddled with the responsibility of providing skills to professionals from relevant fields on the use of science and technology to detect, prevent and investigate fraud and also put some measures to prevent future occurrence.
He said that its upstream subsidiary fleeced was the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) .
He also said that under his watch, the corporation had made significant progress in terms of fraud detection, prevention and control.
“There is a lot of sanity that has happened in the industry as a result of this. Recently, due to the work, we were able to get the Atlantic companies who were fleecing the NNPC subsidiary, the NPDC, and we got an award for them to refund 1.6 billion dollars to the NPDC, through the arbitration process.
“We have also been able to stem fraud. High profile court cases were been set up to defraud the NPDC.
“ If you see the amount of money involved, if you do not have people who are determined to fight corruption, our chances would have been compromised by over 1.6 billion dollars.
“We have had cases, like NNPC versus IPCO, where they are demanding over 400 million dollars, and because of their activities, we were able to settle out of court with them for 37.5 million dollars, which is a saving of several percentages, about less than 10 per cent of the total amount,” he said
Baru added that the recovery was possible as all staff of the corporation and its business partners had imbibe transparency in all areas of their operations.
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