IslamicFinance.de

The Nigeria Customs Service announced that only Jazz Bank was able participate in the first bidding of its e-auction exercise. Joseph Attah, the Customs National Public Relations Officer (PRO), said that Jazz Bank was the only one out of the 23 customs duty collecting banks that accessed the e-auction platform. The PRO said that all the 23 Customs duty collecting banks were carried along and the process was subjected to user acceptability test. Throughout the testing period, no bank indicated any problem with the platform. However, upon launch only Jaiz Bank was discovered to be ready and active on the platform. Attah noted that the first 48 hours bidding period produced 43 winners. Items uploaded were 130 vehicles, 43 people placed their bids and won vehicles.

A forensic audit of Nigeria’s state oil firm released on Monday confirmed the accusation by Emir Muhammed Sanusi that the NNPC withheld about $20 billion that it ought to have remitted to the national treasury. The report ordered released by President Goodluck Jonathan, more than two months after it was submitted by PriceWaterHouseCoopers confirmed that the NNPC illegally expended $18.53 billion on operational costs, kerosene and petrol subsidies, without authorisation from the National Assembly. Part of the money was also withheld by an NNPC subsidiary, without National Assembly authorisation.

Dubai has repaid $1.93 billion raised from Islamic bonds and renewed its commitment to pay back billions of dollars worth of debt on time. Dubai reportedly repaid 2.5 billion dirhams ($68 million, 54 million euros) in dirham sukuk and $1.25 billion in dollar sukuk. It said both sukuk matured on Monday. Dubai has repaid or restructured billions of dollars of debt, as the emirate’s economy recovers from its 2009 debt emergency in the midst of the global financial crisis. The International Monetary Fund estimates that Dubai and its government-linked entities face a total maturing debt of around $80 billion.