MTN Nigeria has been invited to appear before Nigerian MPs to discuss allegations of an illegal transfer of $13.92 billion (R199 billion) out of the country. MTN denies the alleged improper repatriation of funds out of Nigeria.
MTN along with Nigeria's industry, trade and investment minister and four big banks have been invited to appear before Nigeria's senate committee on banking, insurance and other financial institutions on 20 October for an "investigate hearing" on the allegations.
The upper house of Nigeria's parliament last month agreed to investigate whether Africa's biggest mobile operator illegally transferred the money out of Nigeria between 2006 and 2016. The allegations first appeared in a motion to launch an investigation, proposed by senator Dino Melaye.
Last month, MTN denied allegations of any improper repatriation of funds out of Nigeria. MTN Nigeria CEO Ferdi Moolman said the allegations were "completely unfounded and without any merit". Nigeria's minister of industry, trade and investment, Okechukwu Elenemah, has also denied any wrongdoing.
The four lenders invited to appear before the senate committee are Stanbic IBTC Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, Citibank and Diamond Bank committee's chairman, Rafiu Adebayo Ibrahim.
Citi and Diamond Bank declined to comment to Reuters while a spokesman for Stanbic was unavailable and Standard Chartered said it would cooperate fully with law enforcement agencies.
MTN failed to respond to requests for comment from ITWeb by the time of publication.
The investigation comes just a few months after the telecoms operator agreed to pay a reduced fine of N330 billion (R25 billion at the time, R15 billion now), after about eight months of negotiations with Nigerian authorities.
The original N1.04 trillion (R71 billion at the time) penalty was issued by the Nigerian Communications Commission last October for failing to meet a deadline to disconnect 5.1 million unregistered SIM cards in Nigeria. The fine was later reduced to N780 billion before Nigerian authorities and the MTN leadership agreed on N330 billion, to be paid in instalments over three years.
MTN is the largest mobile operator in Africa's biggest economy and Nigeria accounts for about a third of MTN's revenue. Out of the MTN group's 232.6 million subscribers, around 58.9 million are in Nigeria.
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