Fresh Trouble on CBN Governor, Emefiele
A website emefielemustgo.com dedicated to a campaign for the sack of the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele has gone online.
The website which is being promoted by an unidentified group, said it is a group of concerned Nigerians who want CBN governor sacked because of the damage he has brought to the Nigerian economy. It however said it can be contacted through its email savenigeria@protonmail.com.
“Nigeria is Africa’s largest economy and the biggest black nation in the world.
Since the Buhari government came into power in May 2015, the Central Bank governor, Godwin Emefiele, has grown in power, influence and corruption. He has now done a lot of damage to Nigeria’s economy and credibilty with his disastrous forex policies and control of the markets.
In the second post, the group detailed how Emefiele favoured Zenith Bank in the purchase of forex while sanctioning Stanbic bank for doing same.
“ICBC bank of China wanted to bring some dollars into the Nigerian economy. They called Stanbic IBTC who they normally use for their transactions and told them that they wanted to exchange the $60 million for naira and that they wanted a rate of N390 to $1.”
“Please be aware that Godwin Emefiele has previously warned all the banks to phone him before they do any foreign exchange transaction above N315 to $1 or else he will sanction them. Yes, you must phone Emefiele before you can buy dollars at more than N315 to $1!”
“So Stanbic called him to ask for his permission to buy the dollars from ICBC. Emefiele refused to give them permission. Stanbic now went back to ICBC to tell them they could not buy the dollars at that rate as CBN had refused them approval. Lo and behold, ICBC then informed Stanbic that they had already sold the $60 million to Zenith Bank at N390 to $1!!!”
“How did Zenith go behind Stanbic’s back to buy the dollars for the same rate when Emefiele had refused to give Stanbic approval??!”
“Please be aware that Emefiele has instructed banks to always post their transactions on Reuters. It is through Reuters that international investors and foreign media see Nigeria’s daily foreign excahnge transactions. But in this case, Zenith Bank did not post the $60m transaction on Reuters. Why? Is it because Emefiele wants to continue deceiving the world that Nigeria’s exchange rate is below N315 to $1?”
“But other banks heard that Zenith Bank had done a transaction for N390 to $1. Based on this, they thought that Emefiele had released his tight control of the market. Some of them quickly started calling their foreign clients to bring in money that could not be brought in because of the artificial low rates enforced by Emefiele.”
“This was where Standard Chartered entered Emefiele’s trouble. They called one of their foreign clients to arrange a $25m transaction at N380 to $1. They quickly bought it and then sold all the $25m to various Nigerian clients at N380.50 to $1. This is because Emefiele has another rule that banks must not charge more than a spread of 50kobo on forex deals. But typical of Emefiele, he allows some people break this rule!”
“The $60 million that Zenith Bank purchased from ICBC at N390 to $1 was sold to a Nigerian client at N420 to $1! Emefiele allowed them to do this and he also allowed them not to put the transaction in the Reuters system.”
“Standard Chartered then committed another offence according to the rules of Emefiele. They updated the $25 million transaction in Reuters. This means that Reuters then showed that rates on the interbank market were going up. They also did not call him for approval before doing the deal.”
“These 2 offences made Emefiele very angry so he immediately wrote Standard Chartered a letter (we have seen a copy of this letter) asking them to explain themselves. He immediately debited their account with a N1.7bn fine (Please note that the profit that they made on the deal was N12.5 million!). He also asked them to suspend their Chief Treasurer. Standard Chartered have placed the Treasurer on suspension as instructed.”
He is incompetent, corrupt and very erratic. He makes the rules of the forex market as he likes, depending on who he wants to favour on a particular day.
The size of Godwin Emefiele’s corruption and incompetence is too much even by Nigeria’s standards. We want to expose what is going on at Nigeria’s Central Bank so that Nigerians will know the damage being done to our economy.
We are a group of concerned finance professionals who believe that Nigerians need to know what Godwin Emefiele is doing to our economy and industries. The Central Bank currently has no board because President Buhari has not appointed one. This means that Godwin Emefiele is currently a law unto himself at the Central Bank and he can do anything he likes.
Enough is enough! – Godwin Emefiele must be replaced by a competent Central Bank governor before he damages Nigeria’s economy beyond repair”.
In a post on the website, they stated how Emefiele manipulates the Nigerian forex market and also revealed in another post what it termed the true story Chattered Bank’s $25m forex deal.
In the first post, the group said Emefiele uses several means including illegal methods to ensure that the exchange rate is stable.
“There are currently at least 120 fake trades on the system set up by Emefiele to manipulate the exchange rate.”
“These trades are usually around $1.5m everyday around when the market closes. This is to make sure that such a trade is the closing trade for the day.”
“What Emefiele does is to ‘sell’ $1.5m to a bank like Access at a very low rate everyday around closing time. The CBN will offer to ‘sell’ $1.5m to a bank at N305 and the transaction will be ‘closed’ and updated in Reuters.”
“But these trades are never settled! The CBN does not sell any forex and the bank on the other side of the transaction does not buy anything. They are fake transactions put on the interbank system purely to manipulate the closing exchange rate.”
