Magu’s Probe: ₦573m Transfer To Prophet Omale Was Inadvertent, Says FCMB

Managing director of First City Monument Bank (FCMB), Adam Nuru, says the bank mistakenly credited the church account of Emmanuel Omale with N573 million.

The financial institution clarification is coming against the backdrop of accusation levelled against suspended acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ibrahim Magu.

The Presidential Committee on Audit of Recovered Assets (PCARA) had alleged that Magu was using Omale, founder of the Divine Hand of God Prophetic Ministry, to siphon the commission’s money.

The committee averred the former acting chairman purchased a property in Dubai using Omale’s name — an allegation the pastor has denied.

Magu is currently being investigated by the committee headed by Ayo Salami, former president of the appeal court, for allegedly mismanaging loot recovered by the anti-graft agency.

Testifying before the committee on Thursday, Nuru said the bank just discovered the mistake upon invitation by the committee — four years after the money was posted.

“On January 16, 2016, we made a return to NFIU which indicated that there was a transaction of an inflow of well over N573million. (N573,228,40),” the bank MD said.

“This return was said to be in favour of Divine Hand of God Prophetic Ministries Account No 1486743019.

“After that report, we conducted an investigation and discovered that the lodgement which we reported to NFIU was an error.

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“The error was as a result of the fact that we were using a bank application called Pinnacle-7. However, we migrated from that application to a newer version called Pinnacle-10.

“Usually, when the bank intends to migrate from one application to another, we utilize weekends to carry out the exercise. The migration involves moving all the balances of customers from the previous application to the new application. The account of the Divine Hand Ministries was moved during that migration.

“It was that balance of N573million that was wrongly posted as an inflow into Divine Hand Ministries as reported to NFIU. This error was not peculiar to Divine Hand of God Prophetic Ministries alone but was also ascribed to 27 other accounts.”