Daily Trust (Abuja)
Boco Edet
4 November 2009
Abuja — Trustfund Plc, a Pension Fund Administrator (PFA) has denied allegations that N54 billion accumulated pension's assets transferable to the company by the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) was misappropriated.
Acting Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Trustfund Plc Bernard Ekwe said during a courtesy visit to Media Trust head office yesterday that so far N48 billion worth of assets have been received and are in the custody of the company's pension custodians.
He said the Management of Trustfund and National Pension Commission (NPC) have raised concerns over impropriety in the asset transfer process by the NSITF, which include non-remittance of interest accrued on N1.6 billion realised from the sale of pension assets, the deduction of N373million from the proceeds, and also refusal to remit N43.6 million and N123million collected from the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) and United Bank for Africa Plc.
According to him, "It is unimaginable that someone in this new Pension Scheme would say that N54 billion is missing in a Pension Fund Administrator (PFA). In the scheme you have the pension custodians, you have the PFAs. The assets are kept by the Pension Fund Custodians (PFC) not the fund administrators."
"In 2006, NSITF established pensions assets transferable to us was N54billion and they had transferred almost immediately in that year about N46 billion but till date what we have collected from them is about N48billion to our three custodians- Zenith, UBA and Diamond Pension Custodian Limited.
Those funds are intact with them. But we have also found out that in the course of the transfer there are assets that are still held by NSITF which they have failed to transfer, which is a violation of the Pension Reform Act," he said.
He said, "It was after that Pencom wrote a letter to NSITF asking that these funds be moved to Trustfund immediately but they refused to comply. We also wrote after that to the NSITF board to intervene in the situation and on that account they called their MD to order and they withdrew him from the board and other Directors from the Trust Fund board."
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