Aug 30 (Lagos) - The Central Bank of Nigeria yesterday slammed heavy fines of some of the largest foreign banks operating in Nigeria and one local bank.
According to a tweet from CBN,
Local subsidiary of London based Standard Chartered received fine of N 2.4 billion.
Local subsidiary of US based CitiBank received fine of N 1.2 billion.
Stanbic IBTC (
STANBIC ) subsidiary of South Africa based Standard Bank received fine of N 1.8 billion.
Diamond Bank Plc (
DIAMONDBNK ) received fine of N 250 million.
Also the four banks have to return USD 8.134 billion to CBN for breaching Nigeria's foreign exchange regulations on MTN's illegal capital repatriation.
In our opinion this is a welcome sign from CBN because such actions of these banks directly lead to Naira devaluations over time. USD 8 billion is almost 18% of Nigeria's foreign reserves. That is a massive amount given the country's low foreign reserves and can be used to shore up the Naira value and thereby improve the buying power of consumers.
If these things are not checked, day is not far when Naira will trade at 1000 to 1 Dollar in parallel market in our opinion.
Kudos to CBN, this is long overdue. They should go further and revoke licenses of such banks as well which are involved in illegal activities.
As far is MTN in concerned, they don't seem to learn from their mistakes. They continue to take billions out of Nigeria and if this is being done illegally then this is a massive fraud and should not be allowed to continue.
reporting for easykobo.com on Thursday, Aug 30 2018 from Lagos, Nigeria