It issued a warning after claiming that the business is under investigation for possible money laundering and illicit foreign exchange transactions.

The accusation was called "spurious and a rehash of a similar report peddled out of malice by a competitor masquerading as a concerned Nigerian in 2016," according to a statement from DIL.

The declaration, which was signed by DIL management, reiterated that foreign exchange for all of its many projects was only obtained through the Interbank Foreign Exchange Market in accordance with CBN authorization. For example, DIL clarified that "Letters of Credit" were established in all of its transactions for the building of the different operating facilities and the acquisition of heavy machinery and supplies necessary for the Dangote Cement plants to begin operations.

The Letters of Credit instruments had explicit terms and conditions for payments related to the transactions, which aligned with the International Chamber of Commerce's Universal Customs & Practice for Documentation Credit, or UCP 600. It is also important to remember that the principal contractor, Sinoma International Engineering Co Ltd, a Chinese government-owned business, which accounted for more than 75% of this expense, had Letters of Credit that were only fulfilled upon the production of the necessary shipping documentation. No payment was ever made through a Dubai business that we own, according to the statement.

"All FX purchased in respect of our African Projects expansion were fully utilized for what they were intended for," DIL said in an explanation of its foreign exchange operations. The projects that the FX was used on are open to the public view. According to records, several of these initiatives were implemented by senior government officials in Nigeria. Chief executives from a number of banks, captains of industry, and presidents of the host nations who their senior government officials backed were there.

The business said that the money it has raised for its plan to expand throughout Africa is a legal capital investment in those nations and that the $576 million in foreign exchange that has already been repatriated has helped to stabilize the foreign exchange market and increase foreign exchange revenues in Nigeria. Furthermore, DIL stressed that it had always followed the orders of the Central Bank of Nigeria by funding the building of its different plants through the Interbank FX Market and that it had given pertinent quarterly progress reports to the banks for subsequent submission to the CBN.

For regulatory and tax considerations, the host nations' legislation typically mandates that payments to certain local suppliers, contractors, and vendors be made locally. The money for pre-operational costs and other locally produced building supplies is then sent to our Project Accounts in the host nations so that suppliers may be paid according to local laws. Each of these transactions had thorough documentation and approval.

We are now able to repatriate FX to Nigeria thanks to this. The DIL statement stated, "Specifically, CBN gave us approvals between 2010 and 2018 to purchase FX totaling $3.755 billion from the Interbank market for the funding of our various African Projects out of which we have utilized only 47.70 percent of the approvals in the total sum of N1.791 billion." All of the payments made in respect of our various African Projects can be further verified, having been audited over the years by our auditors, Messrs Deloitte & Touche and KPMG in the course of their statutory audits.