Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, are set to arrest some senior staff of the Joint Matriculations Board, JAMB, who have been fingered in the disappearance of over N8 billion revenue.
The examination body is said to have failed to remit revenue in excess of N8billion to the federal government between 2010 and 2015. The amount include unremitted Value Added Tax and Withholding Tax.
It would be recalled that, following the surprise remittance of N7.8billion to the government by the Ishaq Oloyede led management of the examination body, the federal government, working on the suspicion that the previous management had defrauded the federation of billions in unremitted revenue, ordered a forensic audit of the accounts of JAMB from 2010 to 2015.
EFCC sources said that the report of the forensic audit committee was turned in some months ago and subsequently forwarded to the EFCC by the minister of finance, Kemi Adeaosun, for criminal investigation.
The commission then set up a crack investigative panel to review the report and take further investigative steps to bring the indicted culprits to book. The EFCC source further disclosed that the panel has taken the report through a fine tooth comb.
“We are looking at a number of accounts with suspicious inflow and outflow. From the detailed analyses of the accounts, we have identified a few officers that will help our investigation because funds have been traced to their accounts. Very soon, we will be inviting them for questioning.
“Among the officers that we may invite are a serving director and a retired director of the examination body,” the source said.
Other likely staff to be arraigned in court any moment from now include an official based in Makurdi, Philomina Chieshe, who earlier, claimed that a snake swallowed N36 million, money that was part of the proceeds of the sale of scratch cards.
Chieshe, who was arrested months ago, allegedly told interrogators that the money was collected in installments from her by her coordinator, Samuel Umoru.
She claimed that the coordinator usually asked her to withdraw proceeds of the sale of the cards from her account in two banks.