Central Bank of Nigeria


A Nigerian court sets tough bail terms for the chief executive officers of three banks who are facing trial over alleged financial crimes.

Two other bail applications by FinBank PLC and Intercontinental Bank PLC officials, also facing charges, will be decided on Tuesday.

Judge Dan Abutu of a Lagos court ordered each of the former heads of the Oceanic International Bank PLC, Union Bank Nigeria PLC and Afribank PLC, to pay a bail for 100 million naira (USD 649,000).

Conditions under the bail included barring the three executives from leaving Nigeria and the securing of the bail by two guarantors who are serving members of parliament or chairmen of a financial or oil services firm which have assets of at least one billion naira.

All the chief executive officers were charged on August 31 and are facing charges ranging from recklessly granting loans, to share price manipulations following a USD 2.6 billion bailout last month. Their trial will continue on November 23.

The Central Bank of Nigeria injected 400 billion naira (USD 2.6 billion) into Afribank, FinBank, Intercontinental Bank, Oceanic Bank and Union Bank a month ago and sacked their chief executives, saying they were so weakly capitalized that they posed a systemic risk.

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