THE Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, yesterday, said it has recovered
over N5 billion illegal charges on depositors’ funds from commercial
banks.Deputy Governor in charge of financial service of the CBN, Mr.
Kingsley Moghalu, who disclosed this in Abuja, yesterday, during an
interface with the Senate Committee on Banking, Insurance and other
Financial Institutions, said the money was illegally deducted from
depositors’ funds by the banks.
He said the recovered monies had been paid back to the affected
depositors by the commercial banks. He, however, did not mention the
banks involved in the illegal deductions.
According to him, “we are aware of complaints of all sorts of
inappropriate bank charges and we have taken a number of steps to begin
to systematically address these problems.
“I can tell you that in the last year or two the CBN has been able to
recover N5 billion in wrong charges to bank customers. Those monies
have been returned to Nigerians by their banks at the directives of the
CBN in the course of our work in consumer protection.”
Moghalu who also briefed the Senator Bassey Otu-led committee
informed the Senators that the apex bank had put in place an appropriate
framework to forestall any future financial crisis in the banking
sector.
He added that the CBN’s priority in its reform process between now
and 2015 was to ensure consumer protection and data integrity, including
a sound macro prudential framework that would help to stabilise the
financial sector.
He also mentioned that another strategy by the apex bank to forestall
any financial meltdown in future was stopping commercial banks from
giving further loans to customers who owed up to N5 billion.
