Agency discovers cartel in foreign ministry that uses promotion exercises to defraud govt

chika ebuzor

August 5, 2018 10:05 AM

EFCC has also launched an investigation into an alleged N90m estacode scam in the ministry of foreign affairs.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has reportedly discovered a cartel in the foreign ministry that uses officers’ promotion to defraud the Federal Government.

According to Punch, the EFCC has also launched an investigation into an alleged N90m estacode scam in the ministry of foreign affairs.

When contacted, the Spokesman for the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Tope Fatile, denied knowledge of the happenings.

According to an EFCC source, “Nigeria has 114 embassies all over the world and personnel from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are posted to the different embassies abroad. The promotion examination of the personnel is usually conducted abroad.

“For the 2018 promotion, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was said to have grouped embassies into four zones for ease of coordination. There is the Africa Zone with Nairobi, Kenya as centre and the European Zone with its centre at London.

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“The Asia Zone centre is in New Delhi, India; and the America zone centre is located in New York. About 36 officers from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs allegedly supervised the examination in the aforementioned zones while the Federal Civil Service Commission deployed 51 officers for the same exercise.”

The source said that the officers did not spend the whole nine days approved for the exercise.

The source also told Punch that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs paid N37, 741,590 as estacode to its officers while the Federal Civil Service Commission spent N52,474,072, adding that the civil servants will be made to refund the excess estacode.

The EFCC recently arraigned three in Ogun before a Federal High Court, Lagos, over alleged laundering of N179.8 million.

chika ebuzor