No less than 120 managing directors, deputy managing directors and executive directors of deposit money banks, including those of Access Bank and United Bank for Africa (UBA), are likely to spend 10 years imprisonment due to their non-compliance to Bank Employees, ETC (Declaration of Assets) Act 1986.
In what appeared to be a final warning addressed to the bankers, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) gave the top bankers till the ending of June 2021 to comply, even as the initial deadline of Monday, June 14, has passed.
“The truth is that this law has been in place for over 35 years, but it was hardly ever enforced and so these bankers would just declare anything or not declare at all. However, the EFCC is now demanding the declaration forms as part of moves to sanitise the system.
“To this effect, the chairman has written a reminder to the banks, asking all top executives to comply latest by the end of June,” an investigator who spoke on the matter was quoted as saying.
What you should know
According to the Bank Employees, ETC (Declaration of Assets) Act 1986, bankers should declare their assets through the appropriate authority like the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation. But the forms were hardly ever scrutinised, a trend which the EFCC seeks to change.
Section 1 of the Act states, “Every employee of a bank shall, within fourteen days of the commencement of this Act, make a full disclosure of all his assets.
“In the case of a new employee, he shall within 14 days of assuming duty with the bank make a full disclosure of all his assets at the time of his assuming duty; and for the purpose of this subsection, a transfer or secondment from one bank to another shall be treated as a new employment.”
Section 2 of the Act reads, “The full disclosure of assets required under Section 1 of this Act shall be made in the manner prescribed in the Declaration of Assets Form contained in Form A of the Schedule to this Act and shall be executed before and attested to by the Registrar of a High Court, the Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court.
“The President or the appropriate authority may from time to time prescribe such other forms as may be necessary to achieve the purpose and intendment of this Act.”
The Act in Section 5 states that the Chief Executive of every bank “shall twice in every year, but not later than 7 January, or 7 July, as the case may be, submit to the appropriate authority a list of all employees who joined or left the employment of the bank in the immediately preceding six months expiring respectively on 31 December of the previous year and 30 June of that year respectively.”
The Act explained that “Chief Executive” meant the chairman, the managing director or other similar officer of a bank, including the Central Bank of Nigeria.
Likewise, the Act defined “employee” or “employee of a bank” to include the governor (of the CBN), the chairman and members of the board, managing director, director, general manager, manager, examiner, inspector, controller, agent, supervisor, officer, clerk, cashier, messenger, cleaner, driver, and any other category of workers of the Central Bank, a bank or other financial institutions.
Defaulters of the act
Access Bank has 16 board members, UBA has 15, Sterling Bank and EcoBank have 13 members each, while First Bank of Nigeria (FBN), Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB), and Fidelity Bank have 12 members each as contained on their official websites.
Others are Zenith Bank, 11; Wema Bank, 11; Union Bank 11; First City Monument Bank, 9; and Unity Bank, 8.
