The Central Bank of Nigeria came to the aid of embattled South Africa’s Standard Bank’s subsidiary in Nigeria, Stanbic IBTC, in its fight against Nigeria’s Financial Reporting Council that wants it to restate its financial statements.

Last week, the reporting council gave Stanbic 60 days to restate its 2013 and 2014 accounts over  what it termed as “misleading” disclosures relating to some expenses in the statements.

The regulator also imposed a $5 million fine on the banking group and barred some directors from signing off financial statements as stipulated in the regulations for inspection and monitoring of public companies.

The Nigerian unit of Africa’s largest lender by assets is among other major companies facing fines over the past two weeks from the West African nation’s regulators.

MTN Group, another South African company was fined $5.2 billion by the Nigerian Communications Commission failing to disconnect customers with unregistered SIM cards.

First Bank of Nigeria, the country’s biggest bank by assets, was also slapped with a $9.4 million fine over a directive to transfer deposits of state companies to the central bank.

The CBN has however questioned the council’s findings against the Stanbic and said that the law only allowed a court and not the FRC to impose such punishment.

In a statement, seen by BDlive, the central bank governor Godwin Emefiele criticized the reporting council for failing to follow due process in publicizing the sanctions against Stanbic, causing an 18 percent plunge in its share price.

Emefiele said CBN did not find any “material misrepresentation” in the Stanbic’s past books and saw no need for restating the accounts.

Stanbic shares recovered 4.9 percent after the central bank statement was issued, Reuters reported.