NINE out of 21 bank chief executives, on Monday, failed to honour the invitation of House Committee on Finance investigating remittance of tax to the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS).
The House committee, however, threatened that it would not hesitate to issue warrant of arrest on the affected bank chiefs.
To this end, another invitation was extended to the affected bank executives to appear tomorrow.
The committee was probing tax returns to FIRS from 2008 to 2012, as well as level of compliance with collected tax remittances to the Federal Government within the same period.
The affected banks are Zenith Bank, Sterling Bank, Stanbic IBTC, Skye Bank, Keystone Bank, FCMB, Ecobank, Enterprise Bank and CitiBank.
Chairman of the committee, Honourable Abdulmumin Jibrin, said “we don’t take this lightly. These CEOs talk about global best practices at every turn, yet they fail to honour the parliament’s invitations.
“We will take nothing less than the rank of Executive Director. If they feel their jobs are more important than a call to parliament, then they must explain.”
Earlier, Honourable Jibrin had said the exercise was in line with the oversight mandate of the committee on FIRS and tax matters, stressing that “our vision is to strengthen the FIRS and optimise the potentials of our tax system.
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