According to the Nation, the suspects cannot yet be named because “the investigation is yet to be concluded.

“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,” anEFCCsource said.

“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 cartel wielded enormous influence in the sector and it almost frustrated the investigation and the recovery. As a matter of fact, some forces in NNPC and PPMC did not want us to go this far,” the source added.

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The agency involved was the Petroleum Products and Marketing Company (PPMC), an NNPC subsidiary which has now been renamed National Petroleum Marketing Company (NPMC).