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Nigerian Regulators Go Ham On Multinationals, Next Stop UBA

Nigerian Regulators Go Ham On Multinationals, Next Stop UBA

United Bank of Africa (UBA) became the fourth multinational company operating in Nigeria to be penalized by a regulator for non-compliance with the country’s new government rules.

The Lagos-based bank that operated in 19 African countries has been fined 2.9 billion naira ($15 million) by the Central Bank of Nigeria for not remitting to the federal account 96.4 billion naira belonging to the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) in time, This Day reported.

The Nigeria Stock Exchange listed bank said in a statement that its management in the west African nation were in talks with the central bank over the penalty.

In a move to clamp down on corruption and financial wastage in the petroleum sector, the country’s leading export earner, President Muhammadu Buhari and central bank Governor Godwin Emefiele gave lenders until Sept. 15 to move funds for state-owned bodies to the Treasury Single Account at the central bank.

According to Chibuike Uche, a member of the central bank’s monetary policy committee, less than half of the amount was transferred to the federal account one week after the deadline expired, Mail & Guardian reported.

Other banks that have been fined include First Bank of Nigeria Ltd., Nigeria’s largest lender by assets, on which was also fined by the central bank for the same offence as UBA, and Standard Bank’s Nigerian subsidiary Stanbic Bank, whose directors were suspended for alleged financial misrepresentation.

Earlier this week South Africa’s MTN Group was slapped with a $5.2 billion fines, the largest penalty ever leveled on an African company, for allowing unregistered SIM cards to operate on its network.