I never ordered Gwarzo to stop Oando audit —Adeosun

Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, on Friday, said she never requested suspended Director General, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Mounir Gwarzo, to stop the forensic audit he instituted into the management of OandO Plc as being alleged.

Explaining her role in the Oando investigation, Adeosun said: “there was a meeting on Monday the 27th, which the Permanent Secretary of the ministry and Director of Legal Services were present.

“At that meeting, he was never directed to stop his investigation into Oando in fact, as I have said earlier on in my statement, in October when the original suspension of Oando took place, we had a group meeting with the leadership of the SEC, not just Mr Gwarzo but all of his team, and they presented very clear evidence that Oando had a case to answer and we were satisfied with that and we made our position clear.”

She therefore, declared never to succumb to blackmail by either recalling Gwarzo or stopping the Administrative Panel of Inquiry which she instituted into the two-year tenure of the suspended DG at SEC.

“It was this threat of blackmail that strengthened my resolve to suspend Mr Gwarzo and allow the Administrative Panel of Inquiry to proceed with its probe,” Adeosun said while speaking with newsmen.

According to her, “the Federal Ministry of Finance would like to place it on record that Gwarzo’s suspension is in line with the Public Service Rules (PSRs), to allow for an unhindered investigation of serious allegations of financial impropriety against him.

“Some of the allegations with documented evidence include the awards of contracts to companies related to him and members of his family.

“Based on the evidence from that further work and creditable reports that documents were being unlawfully removed from SEC, as well as consultations with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the decision was taken to suspend Mr Gwarzo.”

The minister explained that Gwarzo was first queried on November 3 and responded on November 7 but that discrepancies were spotted in the reply

It was based on that response that “I asked for more investigations to be done because he gave some responses to some issues that were unsatisfactory so we asked for further investigation to get certain facts from the CAC, and banks based on the evidence.”

“It became clear that we would need to conduct an API and therefore the laws of the Public Service say he has to be suspended, now his responses to the query of the 3rd were raised with him on Monday where he was asked to clarify matters, he was reminded that he said this, but we have evidence to another effect and it became very clear from the inadequacies of his response that he would be suspended.”

Regarding investors’ confidence in the capital market, the finance minister argued that” shareholders have nothing to fear. I earned my leaving all my life from the capital market up until I entered public service, I was a capital market operator.

“The capital market runs on confidence and transparency it’s a very important market, the SEC is not an individual it is an institution and a very important one which must be upheld.”

She added that “investors reacted positively because they know we stand for integrity and they know that there is no attempt to fear with the ongoing investigations, investigators must continue and we have to wait for the result of the API against Mr. Mounir Gwarzo.

“That Administrative Panel is concluding its work and the second is the investigation into Oando the two are completely separate.”