Dangote group breaks silence on EFCC invasion, narrates company’s ordeal

• Officials of the EFCC stormed the Dangote Group headquarters in Lagos on Thursday, to investigate forex allocations to the company during the tenure of Godwin Emefiele as Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN
• Says the company received a letter from the EFCC in the first week of December 2023, requesting details of all the foreign exchange allocated to the company by the CBN from 2014 to the present

The Chairman of the Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, on Saturday clarified the recent invasion of officials of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, to its Head Office in Lagos State.

Recall that officials of the EFCC visited the Dangote Group headquarters in Lagos on Thursday, to investigate forex allocations to the company during the tenure of Godwin Emefiele as Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN.

However, days after the EFCC visit, Dangote Management, in a statement at the weekend explained that “the company received a letter from the EFCC in the first week of December 2023, requesting details of all the foreign exchange allocated to the company by the CBN from 2014 to the present.

The statement said, “We understand similar letters were sent to 51 other Groups of companies requesting for the same information spanning the same period.”

According to the statement, the company responded to the EFCC to acknowledge receipt of the letter whilst seeking clarification on the subsidiaries or companies within the Group that they required information on.

It said the company also requested additional time to compile and properly present the extensive documentation spanning ten years.

The statement partly read, “the EFCC did not provide the clarification sought and also did not honour our request for an extension and insisted on receiving the complete set of documents within the limited timeframe.”

“On 4 January 2024, our team delivered the first batch of documents to the EFCC. However, officers of the EFCC did not accept the documents, insisting on visiting our offices to collect the same set of documents directly.

“Whilst our representatives were still at the EFCC’s office to deliver the documents, a team of their officers proceeded to visit our offices to demand the same documents in a manner that appeared designed to cause us unwarranted embarrassment.”

It noted that no accusations of wrongdoing have been made against the company by the EFCC, adding that they are responding to a request for information to assist the anti-graft agency with their ongoing investigation.