Fresh scandal rocks Bank PHB • 2 Directors bleed bank as losses continue to rise in the latest Charge and Bail versions of Bank MDS .
If indications from CBN-managed Bank PHB are anything to go by, then the bank may not emerge from its current financial mess in a hurry even as the interim tenure of embattled Managing Director; Mr Cyril Chukwumah,
expires next year. Documents released to the Daily Sun by a group of recently- retrenched workers of the bank may have inadvertently opened another can of worms on the embattled bank.
According to the documents, the ex-workers are alleging that Chukwumah may have collected almost $100,000 in estacode having spent close to 50 days abroad since assuming office some six months ago as the Chief Executive. They say this is attributable to the MD’s choice of travelling.
The fresh scandal is rubbing off on Chukwumah, whose sacked ex-staff are now claiming has cumulatively disengaged about 1,000 professional employees in February, in what he claimed would save the bank N4.5 billion. They alleged Chukwumah travelled abroad for 50 days (including 18 days of vacation after 72 days in office), after just five months as MD. At a daily estacode (per diem) rate of $3,000 for MD as stipulated in Bank PHB’s policy, Chukwumah has so far collected a whopping $96,000, excluding the controversial $120,000 leave allowance he was alleged to have collected in December 2009. This becomes mind-boggling when it was revealed that the tenure of the embattled Managing Director expires next year..
Documents obtained by Daily Sun show that he travelled twice in November 2009 to Ghana and London; went on vacation in December/January; travelled to London in January. In February, he travelled again to UK, while so far, this month he has already travelled to London and The Gambia.
Curiously, a new dimension has been added to the newfound luxury of the CEO, as he has entered into an alliance with another director of the bank, who ironically complained to the CBN Governor in December 2009, that the MD was ignoring the board in running the bank. The bank, on the CEO’s approval, now bears the cost of the director’s travel to Boston, Massachusets, USA, on first class ticket, ostensibly in search of core investors. However, his wife also lives in Boston.
The director has also travelled on first class tickets with the Managing Director to The Gambia, London, South Africa, and Freetown, also in search of core investors. Ironically, the director is not on the board of any of the bank’s subsidiaries – Bank PHB, UK; Bank PHB, Gambia; Bank PHB, Liberia; Bank PHB, Sierra Leone; and Bank PHB, Uganda.
Meanwhile, as the MD and the said director embarked on a free-spending lifestyle of luxury and self-enrichment, the bank that the CBN Governor said would be better managed under Chukwumah, continues to post losses. Available records from the bank’s monthly returns to CBN show that it incurred a loss of N3.8 billion in January 2010.
It would be recalled that the nation’s banking public was shocked in January when it was revealed in the media that Chukwumah, who had just spent 72 days as MD, as at December 18, 2009, paid himself an off-shore leave allowance of $120,000, a payment he was entitled to, only after one year in office. In an effort to ameliorate the gravity of his alleged infraction, he explained that he actually cut down the allowance from $450,000 per annum, which the former CEO usually collected, only for it to be revealed that the former CEO, Francis Atuche, never collected any leave allowance in his four-year tenure (2006-2009) as MD.
Not done with the concern for his personal welfare, Chukwumah, also in January reviewed staff emolument by cutting salaries of staff as much as 35%, while cutting his by a mere 18%, before pushing about 1,000 professionals to the labour market in February.
