Some officers of the Nigeria Customs Service, NCS, rejected a whopping sum of $150K bribe from die-hard smugglers to stop the smuggling of $6 million fake dollar notes intercepted at Seme border out of the country.
It is reported that Customs officers of Seme Border Command had on January 31, 2023, intercepted $6 million fake currency bills at Gbaji Customs check point in Lagos. They also seized the international passports of the fake currency syndicate operating in the axis.
Customs Area Controller of the Command, Comptroller Dera Nnadi revealed this while displaying the fake currencies to journalists at Seme Border command on Thursday during a press briefing. He also confirmed that the seizure was made at Gbaji checkpoint.
According to him, the smugglers had offered the customs officers a bribe of $150K authentic dollar notes through the head of the team, Musa Istifanus Datsok, to allow them take the fake currency out of the country. But he said the bribe was rejected by the officers. Nnadi said the seizure was disturbing and dangerous, especially given the fact that the general election is around the corner.
He said, “Some of these currencies bear the same serial number, and besides that, it will be very difficult for you to identify them as fake. Similar to this, we also arrested just few hours after this, two other passengers in a different vehicle, while searching them, we discovered some international passports that belong to Malta Republic.
All the six passports we got bear the same photographs of the same person, but with different names. The passport belongs to the republic of Malta, but bears the photograph of someone who appears to be an European and bearing different names for all the six passports.
The same lady also has six international driver’s licenses bearing her photograph with six different names which shows that we are dealing with a very serious syndicate that moves across the borders. We have two suspects each for the currency and international passports.”
