About $30million of recovered depositors fund kept in a second generation bank appears to be missing, it emerged yesterday.
A special team of investigators raised by Inspector-General of Police (IG) Mike Okiro traced the money to the bank last week but could not recover it.

The Special Investigating Unit (SIU) was constituted by the IG, following a petition that the interim management of the liquidated Fortune Bank refused to pay depositors after allegedly collecting over N5billion from some customers, including the bank’s former chairman, Henry Macpepple.

Macpepple was also the chairman of Suffolk Petroleum Services Ltd, which was paid $ 74miilion by Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) through the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). Macpepple was said to have used the money to cover his investment in the failed bank.

The interim management, however, sent a letter to the Central Bank governor, claiming that the money was "to reduce customers’ indebtedness on SPDC contracts funded by the bank and not for Macpepple’s investment in the bank".

The cash was then recovered from Macpepple and kept in the second generation bank.

But the detectives, who went after the money after obtaining a court warrant, drew blank on getting to the bank.

The bank, sources said, could not account for the cash.

A source told the detectives that the money was in a fixed deposit account and that some people were collecting brokerage on it.

The money is said to be rolled over monthly with 15 per cent interest rate.

Under interrogation, some officers working with the failed bank’s interim managers said the money had been in fixed deposit since last October.

According to the officers, N1, 086,030,054 was fixed in October, N1, 099,599,723 in December and N1, 126,685,708 last month.