Salary scam: FG to probe 23,306 civil servants, banks

 

The Federal Government is concluding plans to probe no fewer than 23,306 federal civil servants, who have been accused by a panel of defrauding the government of millions of naira every month through an organised salary fraud.

The preliminary report of an investigative committee, set up to probe the alleged fraudulent payment of salaries to either ‘ghost’ workers or payments to multiple accounts, indicated that some banks would also be called to answer questions on the huge scam.

In a branch of one of the banks, over 300 accounts were said to have been opened in one day and all the accounts have become inactive.

A competent source on the investigative panel, who spoke to our correspondent on Thursday, said the federal civil servants and the banks, which had allegedly been indicted, had been marked down for thorough investigations and possible sanctions.

The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the government had begun a plan to investigate and remove the names of the indicted civil servants from its payroll.

It was also learnt that some of the affected officers had started resigning their appointments as a pre-emptive measure to avert humiliation and sanctions at the end of the investigation.

Our correspondent gathered that out of 312,000 civil servants, whose bank accounts had been checked so far in the exercise through the Bank Verification Number platform, the accounts of 23,306 workers had questionable transactions.

The exercise was said to have led to the discovery of a high level of irregularities in salary payment.