RECENTLY, Dangote Industries Limited, the parent company of Dangote Cement, claimed BUA Group, the parent company of BUA Cement, allegedly accused it of being involved in illegal FX deals.
According to a Punch report, some online news platforms reported that the special investigator, Jim Obazee, appointed by President Bola Tinubu to look into the Central Bank of Nigeria’s operations under the leadership of the former CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele, was probing the company for alleged illegal forex deals and money laundering.
Dangote Group had denied the allegation, claiming that the BUA Group was spreading inaccurate and detrimental information about the company’s image and reputation and giving a fresh twist to an assertion that did not sail through in 2016.
The Group had also called on all relevant agencies to investigate its FX transactions in the past ten years and make public any infractions discovered.
In a statement accredited to Dangote Group, the company said, “Dangote Group recalled that the spurious and false story was started in 2016 and published in both BusinessDay and Leadership newspapers, and accused the authors of the report of rejigging it to make it appear as authentic and a new development.“It is saddening to note that this publication of Monday, March 14, 2016, in BusinessDay and Leadership newspaper, where the author had alleged that about ‘$3bn foreign exchange sourced from the CBN were diverted to other Dangote companies outside Nigeria, a practice that encourages round tripping and effect money laundering since there is no proper documentation.”
Dangote Group said further that the two newspapers that were misguided into publishing the allegation as an advertorial (2016) have since publicly apologised to their management in writing as well as retracted the advertorial in its entirety in their respective publications, adding that BusinessDay and Leadership Newspapers admitted that Messrs BUA Nigeria Limited sponsored the advertorial.
Dangote Group stated that its foreign currencies needed for its project were sourced from the interbank FX window in compliance with the CBN approvals and that all its FX dealings regarding its African projects expansion were fully utilised for what they were meant for.Responding, BUA, in the statement, described the claim as “very cheap attempts at blackmailing the Group.
It also accused Aliko Dangote, the founder and chairman of Dangote Group, of sponsoring “campaigns of calumny” against it, using third-party platforms and that Dangote’s claim was another act intended to drive it out of business.
Aliko Dangote is the founder and chairman of the Dangote Group, a conglomerate measuring in cement manufacturing, sugar milling and refining, port operations, packaging material production and salt refining and has recently ventured into oil and gas refining.
Abdul Samad Rabiu is the founder and chairman of BUA Group, a Nigerian conglomerate concentrating on manufacturing, infrastructure, and agriculture.
Meanwhile, in the three-quarter financial statement for 2023, Dangote Cement reported that it had a net N99 billion in FX loss from its foreign currency obligations, blaming it on the devaluation of the naira from N461.1/$1 at the end of 2022 to N776.8/$1 at the end of September 2023.BUA Cement also, in its nine monthly reports, said it posted an unrealised foreign exchange loss/(gain) of N26.93 billion.