NNPC, CBN, others to appear before NEITI panel

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Top officials of institutions and companies in both the public and private sector are to appear before a special probe panel of the Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative sitting in Lagos beginning from Wednesday.

The panel is part of the mechanism for investigating payments and receipts made to the government from the oil and gas industry between 2009 and 2011.

A statement by the Director of Communications, NEITI, Mr. Ogbonnaya Orji, in Abuja on Sunday, named the organisations to appear before the probe panel to include the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Federal Inland Revenue Services.

Others are Shell, Mobil, Chevron, Conoil, Addax, the Department of Petroleum Resources and the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation.

Orji said, “The audit will examine the basis for computation and calculation of those payments, fees, taxes, royalties owed by companies and what government receives, the process of remittance into the federation account.

“The NEITI audit between 2009 and 2011 also covers investment flows involving governments’ payments by way of joint venture investments, loans, (including repayments), procedure, equity investments, cost and profit oil transactions. This involves downstream businesses such as subsidy payments.

“As part of the process of the audit, all government agencies, oil and gas companies participating in the NEITI audit process are to appear before NEITI auditors to validate all payments made by companies against the receipts declared by relevant government agencies for the period 2009-2011.

“The process, which begins on September 19, and ends on September 20, 2012, will involve reconciliation of payments made by companies with raw data collected by NEITI independent auditors,” he added.

Orji said the conduct of the ongoing industry audits of the oil gas and mining sectors was consistent with the primary objectives of NEITI as provided in section two of NEITI Act 2007.