Beam searchlight on insurance sector, operator tells EFCC

Operators in the insurance industry have called on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to pay closer attention to the sector by responding promptly whenever fraud cases perpetrated in the sector are reported to the anti-graft body.

To this end, the operators are of the opinion that the level of attention which the EFCC gives the banks should be given to the insurance sector so that some measure of sanity would be introduced into the insurance industry.

Mr. Yomi Rufai, interim Chief Executive Officer of Investment & Allied Assurance Plc, who made this assertion exclusively to Vanguard, lamented that the EFCC is slow in reacting to issues in the insurance industry.

Giving an example, Rufai noted that EFCC should have apprehended the sacked Vice Chairman of IAA who is alleged to have defrauded the company of N26 billion, but the body chooses to ignore the call to apprehend him while the culprit walks around freely despite the fact that the National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) has alerted both the EFCC and the SSS of his alleged fraudulent act.

Rufai, charged the EFCC to wake up to their responsibility, stating that the alleged stolen money should be recovered and ploughed back into the company to create some measure of liquidity in the system.

The interim CEO lamented that IAA is in need of cash to get back to business and wondered why the security agency is not serious with the issue.

However, a staff of the company who spoke on the basis of anonymity noted that the sacked Vice Chairman has friends in high places and even in the security agency, hence the reason for the hesitation in bringing him to book.

Rufai therefore called on the EFCC to act fast stating “The act was not a commercial transaction; it was a deliberate swindling of the company’s money from the company’s purse.”

Rufai stated that NAICOM has been able to identify the problem as well as who is involved and they have also done their part by reporting to the necessary security agencies of government as such the security agencies are supposed to do their own part.

In his words “One should give credit to NAICOM because they have been able to do what is needful of them as government by reporting somebody who has committed this fraud or atrocity. So, it is left for EFCC and SSS to actually carry out their own findings; charge the accused to court and recover public money that is in his custody as the CBN did with the likes of Cecilia Ibru of Oceanic Bank and Erastus Akingbola of Intercontinental Bank. We expect them to do a similar thing in IAA.”

Their role as interim managers of IAA, according to Rufai, is to operate the company as a going concern so that the pains of stakeholders in the company are minimised, adding “Our role as interim mangers is such that if the security agencies will want to liaise with us at any point in time, we will be willing to release any information or the other. But it is not for us to be going to them and be knocking on their doors.”