Two brothers, Yusuf Mukhtar and Bashir Mukhtar, who are staffers of CBN and GTBank respectively, have allegedly conspired to steal over N70m by burning down a bullion van to cover up their tracks.

The duo conspired with the driver of the van to pour petrol on the vehicle and set it on fire on November 13 in an isolated track on the new campus of Bayero University, Kano.

Insiders said when they set the van on fire around 6:47pm, they removed some of the money and put them in another vehicle before the arrival of fire fighters and the police.

This newspapers gathered that Bashir, who coordinates cash movement at the GTBank in Kano, abused his position by deliberately accepting mutilated naira notes that are marked for destruction from his brother, Yusuf, who works at the state apex bank office.

“After accepting the money, they will then swap them with good notes and hide in their homes,” said a source familiar with the investigation.

“The plot went awry when Bashir realized that auditors will soon query the enormity of mutilated notes, trace their sources, dates of receipt, among others. So they organized the arson and make it look natural.”

Witnesses in the university told DAILY NIGERIAN that they saw the occupants of the van setting fire on it and removing some of the money from the burning vehicle.

A series of videos obtained by this newspaper also show the vehicle burning, with onlookers questioning the fire “incident”.

Sources told that fire service officers and police detectives also suspected a foul play in the “fire accident” when they detected the smell of petrol on some half burnt notes inside the armored compartment.

The driver of the van, a staff of Bankers Warehouse, was first arrested, and upon investigation, he confessed to the crime and named his brother and others as his accomplice.

Bankers Warehouse, according to their website, is a private company that “has a Service Agreement with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to receive, process, sort, vault and pay out cash to Deposit Money Banks (DMB’s), on behalf of the CBN.”

Sources said that the deal couldn’t have been struck without connivance of some officials of the company.

But upon interrogation, Bashir admitted that his sibling partner-in-crime allegedly supplied the mutilated notes and swap them with good ones from GTBank.