By Tabora Bojang
The Central Bank of The Gambia has said it fined Access Bank and Ecobank Gambia each D200,000 for “breaching” certain guidelines in the opening of accounts for companies suspected of importing and selling Russian fuel in The Gambia without paying tax.
The National Assembly’s special committee which investigated the scandal recommended the CBG to consider imposing appropriate sanctions on the two banks for breaching prudential risk guidelines. According to the committee, Access Bank failed to implement enhanced customer due diligence procedures in the case of Creed Energy, and opening of the sub-account in the name of Creed/ Apogee FZC which allowed principal suspect Mr Aurimas to be the sole signatory to this account to carry out his suspected illicit activities by wiring a significant amount of funds to the Apogee FZC offshore account.
For Ecobank, the committee found it relaxed its internal controls and compliance by allowing the opening of an account for Ultimate Beige Logistics and Apogee FZC that did not qualify as a sub-account and for allowing Mr Aurimas to operate it as a sole signatory without Apogee FZC being registered in The Gambia which violates banking rules.
Asked how far central bank has gone in implementing this recommendation, CBG governor Saidy responded: “The parliamentary report recommended that we penalise these banks but when we discovered this matter, we immediately penalised the two banks and charged each of them D200,000. We did not even ask for a cheque. We took these fines out of their reserve money that was deposited at the central bank and we kept the fines as money of the Gambian people.”
The governor added that they have also set up a team with Financial Intelligence Unit “to go back and double check on these two banks”. He said during this exercise all banks were “checked and combed” to ensure that “those kinds of practices never existed”. Governor Saidy vowed: “If we discover any of the banks that did a similar thing we will take the appropriate action and impose penalties.”
