Aliko Dangote, the billionaire chairman of Dangote Group, has finally spoken out about the surprise visit of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to his corporate headquarters in Lagos on Thursday.
The EFCC, Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency, stormed the Dangote Group offices as part of its probe into the foreign exchange allocations made by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) under the leadership of Godwin Emefiele, the current governor.
In a statement issued on Saturday, the Dangote Group said it had received a letter from the EFCC in early December 2023, asking for details of all the forex it had received from the CBN since 2014. The statement added that the EFCC had also sent similar letters to 51 other companies, seeking the same information for the same period.
The Dangote Group said it had replied to the EFCC, acknowledging the letter and requesting clarification on which of its subsidiaries or companies were under investigation. It also asked for more time to gather and present the extensive documentation that spanned over ten years.
However, the statement claimed that the EFCC did not respond to its queries and did not grant its request for an extension. Instead, the EFCC insisted on getting the full set of documents within a short deadline.
“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,” the statement read.
The Dangote Group stressed that it had not been accused of any wrongdoing by the EFCC, and that it was cooperating with the agency to provide the information it needed for its ongoing investigation.