Following allegation of massive oil deal between the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and some Swiss Oil dealers to the tune of $6.8 billion, the House of Representatives Tuesday, raised a panel to probe the alleged deal.
Consequently, the House has directed its standing committees on Petroleum Resources (Upstream), Petroleum Resources (Downstream) and Justice to look into all issues contained in the report and report back within four weeks.
A major partner of the NNPC in the deal, Vitol and Transfigura Commodity Trading Firms is expected to be summoned to answer some questions before the panel.
The Swiss report accused the NNPC of selling crude oil below global market value, describing the scam as the biggest oil fraud in Africa.
The decision to probe was sequel to a motion raised by Abiodun Abudu Balogun (Ogun APC) who urged the House to look into the report in the interest of the nation.
He said the report accused NNPC of being “in connivance with major Swiss oil trading Companies, draining Nigeria of billions of dollars of revenue through the sale of crude oil below the market value.
“Nigeria is the only major oil producing nation that sells 100 percent of its crude oil allocations to private traders rather than markets it herself and benefit from the resulting added value with the greatest number of beneficiaries of export allocations.
“The sharp practices and deals in NNPC crude allocations to local refineries which are not utilized but sold fraudulently at knock down prices to Geneva based companies through letter box companies by SWAP arrangement”.
Also, the panel has been asked to establish whether the alleged scam is one of the reasons why NNPC and its subsidiaries had failed to publish their detailed financial reports since 2005.
