[November 08, 2010] 

http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2010/11/08/5121689.htm

Nov 08, 2010 (Daily Trust/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) -- Money laundering allegation against the financier of the New Generation Consortium is the cause of the delay in NITEL sale, Director General of Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE) Ms Bolanle Onogorowa has revealed.

The deadline for the extension sought by the New Generation Consortium to pay the money expired last Thursday.The DG said while the transaction was on, a letter was written by the Ambassador of United Arab Emirate alleging that the financier of the New Generation Consortium was involved in money laundering.

She said: "It is difficult for them to transfer their funds because of fears of terrorism. You are supposed to transfer $750 million. You can't do that unless the securities all over the world are satisfied that the funds are going to be used for the purpose, so this is the challenge that they have right now and they asked for time.

"We only hope and pray that when they overcome this challenge, the funds will come through and then we can start a new era." The Federal Government granted New Generation Telecommunications Consortium, the preferred bidder in the privatization of Nigerian Telecommunications Ltd and its mobile arm, M-tel, 20 working days extension for the payment of $750 million which is the 30 % bid security for the purchase of the enterprise.

The consortium had in a letter received by the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) on Thursday, November 4, 2010 informed of the consortium's difficulty with concluding the due diligence and compliance processes associated with the transfer of such huge funds. According to them," we are requesting for a 20 working day extension to clarify all compliance and due diligence issues and also to remit the funds into BPE's account." Recall that President Goodluck Jonathan had approved that the BPE conclude the privatisation of NITEL and M-TEL and directed that the consortium pay a bid security of $750 million as a pre-condition for the issuance of an offer letter in its bid to acquire NITEL and M-TEL.

In accordance with the provisions of the Requests for Proposal (RFP), the bid security sum is to be paid within ten calendar days from the date of receipt of notification by BPE. The balance of the bid amount of $1, 750 million should be paid within sixty days from the date of the issue of an offer letter.

It would be recalled that New Generation Consortium had emerged the preferred bidder with an offer price of $2.5 billion during the opening of financial bids for the privatisation of NITEL and M-TEL which was held on February 16, 2010 in Abuja. The reserve bidder is Omen International with an offer price of $956,996,091.

The National Council on Privatisation (NCP) had at its meeting of March 12, 2010 set up an eight-member ad-hoc committee under the chairmanship of the Attorney-General of the Federation to review the NITEL/ M-TEL sale transaction. The Committee found out that the transaction complied strictly with due process as outlined in the BPE's Procedures Manual and that necessary approvals were obtained through the Technical Committee (TC) and the NCP at every stage of the transaction.

Nigeria invited expressions of interest more than a year ago for a minimum 75 per cent stake in the Nitel conglomerate or a stake in one or several of its components, including mobile arm MTEL, the South Atlantic Terminal underwater cable (SAT-3) and its domestic fixed-line network.