Adam Nuru, managing director of First City Monument Bank (FCMB), says the bank made an error of posting N573 million into the church account of Emmanuel Omale.
The Presidential Committee on Audit of Recovered Assets (PCARA) had accused Ibrahim Magu, suspended acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), of allegedly using Omale, founder of the Divine Hand of God Prophetic Ministry, to launder funds abroad.
The committee said the former acting chairman purchased a property in Dubai using Omale’s name — an allegation the pastor has denied.
Magu is currently being investigated by the committee headed by Ayo Salami, former president of the appeal court, for allegedly mismanaging loot recovered by the anti-graft agency.
Testifying before the committee on Thursday, Nuru said the bank just discovered the mistake upon invitation by the committee — four years after the money was posted.
“On January 16, 2016, we made a return to NFIU which indicated that there was a transaction of an inflow of well over N573million. (N573,228,40),” the bank MD said.
“This return was said to be in favour of Divine Hand of God Prophetic Ministries Account No 1486743019.
“After that report, we conducted an investigation and discovered that the lodgement which we reported to NFIU was an error.
“The error was as a result of the fact that we were using a bank application called Pinnacle-7. However, we migrated from that application to a newer version called Pinnacle-10.
“Usually, when the bank intends to migrate from one application to another, we utilize weekends to carry out the exercise. The migration involves moving all the balances of customers from the previous application to the new application. The account of the Divine Hand Ministries was moved during that migration.
“It was that balance of N573million that was wrongly posted as an inflow into Divine Hand Ministries as reported to NFIU. This error was not peculiar to Divine Hand of God Prophetic Ministries alone but was also ascribed to 27 other accounts.”