Oil marketers have refunded N46 billion in a probe of massive fraud in the sector.
It is all part of the ongoing probe of the rot in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, an Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) source said yesterday.
The marketers, who are not named because “the investigation is yet to be concluded”, lifted products without paying a dime to the defunct Petroleum Products and Marketing Company (PPMC), a subsidiary of the NNPC now known as the National Petroleum Marketing Company(NPMC).
The anti-graft agency busted the fraud after going through the company’s records.
A top source in EFCC, who spoke in confidence with our correspondent, claimed that some of the marketers conspired with some staff of PPMC and NNPC to perpetrate the fraud.
The source said: “When we conducted our investigation, we discovered that the affected marketers sourced products from NNPC through PPMC without paying for them.
“In some instances, these marketers got two or three supplies and paid for one. Through connivance, they cooked the books.
“We discovered that products worth about N100billion were lifted and unpaid for by marketers leading to the invitation and interaction with some of them.
“So far, we have been able to recover N46billion out of the N100billion which the nation had purportedly lost.”
The source expressed concern that the some forces within and outside NNPC and PPMC behind the syndicate almost frustrated the EFCC team probing the “fraud”.
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