South Africa's MTN denied it paid a bribe to Nigerian officials to reduce its fine to 330 billion naira ($1.05 billion) as part of settling a dispute over disconnecting unregistered SIM cards in the West African country.
The telecom group was initially fined $5.2 billion last October for failing to deactivate more than five million unregistered SIM cards.
In June, MTN agreed to pay a reduced fine of 330 billion in a settlement with the Nigerian government and said the fine will be paid by MTN Nigeria over three years.
Meanwhile, Sahara reporters an news website has reported that President Muhammad Buhari received evidence that his Chief of Staff (CoS), Abba Kyari, took N500m from operators of MTN to help the telecommunications giant mitigate the fine imposed on it by the federal government, SaharaReporters has learned.
Sources say the evidence was presented to President Buhari several times including during the Sallah holiday.
According to the website, the mind-boggling revelation is the latest in the mounting allegations of corruption involving members of the top echelon of President Buhari’s administration.
Sahara reporters noted that when the COS was confronted with the evidence, he claimed he was helping the All Progressives Congress party raise funds for the gubernatorial election in Bayelsa State, to which the president is said to have asked him if he was the party chairman, but did not relieve him of his post.
SaharaReporters has previously revealed several corrupt actions of the Chief of Staff. They include taking money from Jide Omokore, a shady businessman who was massively involved in corruption in the oil sector in the preceding administration.
0 comments:
Post a Comment