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23,000 GHOST WORKERS USED BVN TO DEFRAUD FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AS MINISTER VOWS TO PUNISH BANKS

 
The federal government has uncovered how civil servants manipulate the Biometric Verification Number (BVN) to perpetuate fraud.
This was revealed after 23,000 ghost workers were found to have registered on the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) used by government to pay salaries of public workers.
Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun who disclosed this said the discovery was made due to the registration of over 320,000 personnel on the IPPIS platform using their BVN numbers.
Adeosun told the senate committee on Finance Thursday in Abuja that the IPPIS-BVN linkage showed “that there are people who appear on our payroll multiple times.
“BVN links all the accounts of that person, so we are seeing in our payroll, 20 names to one BVN number.”
The minister said government would go after banks to recover all monies paid to the ghost workers at the end of investigations.
She also said payment of the 23,000 suspected workers would be suspended for one month to allow investigations to be completed, adding that any bank found guilty of collusion would be made to refund all the money paid through them.”
She said:  “We have had a meeting on how we are going to clean them off, the process will be that we will suspend that person from the payroll pending the investigation.
“We will try as much as possible to conclude that investigation within 30 days so that we do not suffer innocent people, but we really need to clean our payroll.
“We have about 23,000 that we need to investigate: those whom either the BVN is linked to multiple payment or the name on the BVN account is not consistent with the name on our own payroll.
“Not only will we remove those people from our payroll, but we will also be going after the banks involved to collect our money.
“So some of the information that we are getting is how long has this person been on the pay roll, how much has he had been getting.
“In some getting the accounts are held by the same bank and in some cases all were opened on the same day.
“If we are able to prove that banks have colluded with people to pad our payroll, we are not only going to stop those payments but we are also going to try and recover our money.”
The minister said further that MDAs found culpable in the scheme would be referred to relevant agencies of government for further investigation and prosecution.

The minister explained that in five years, the IPPIS was only able to register 295 workers but with the BVN registration, the ministry planned to register all workers by June.

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