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 Daily
Independent Online.
* Wednesday, July 07, 2004.
‘CBN to facilitate public interest disclosure
act’
By Sanya Adejokun,
Senior Correspondent, Abuja
The Central Bank of Nigeria
(CBN) is to facilitate the promulgation of a public interest disclosure
law.
This is to encourage and facilitate the
detection of financial crimes through the provision of a safe haven for
informants, as well as maintain on-going collaboration with other
stakeholders. CBN Governor, Professor Charles Soludo, made this
disclosure at the third National Seminar on Economic Crime, which held at
the Shehu Yar’Adua Centre, Abuja.
Soludo said this became necessary in order
to ensure continued partnership with financial institutions in the fight
against economic crimes since such partnership offers a mechanism for the
transmission of policy, thereby facilitating easy implementation.
He noted that the government’s fight
against financial crimes in the country has started to yield results, “as
evidenced by the noticeable reduction in the rate of advanced fee fraud
cases,” but warned that “the battle is not yet won as evidence of
economic crimes generally, is still quite high and its ravages still a
continuing plague”.
The apex bank governor lamented that while
information and communication technology has engendered increasing
globalisation, which has greatly influenced socio-economic activities,
“endogenous factors are largely responsible for the rising incidence of
economic crimes in Nigeria”.
Soludo conceded that financial
institutions constitute a key element in the trailing and detection of
proceeds of criminal activities, as a result of the unique role they play
in the payment system and in the collection and transfer of financial
instruments.
Besides, money laundering also represents
a significant source of profit for banks too, the professor of economics
said, adding that reform measures will thus imply cost both in terms of
compliance and loss of profit.
He expressed optimism that the creation of
Financial Intelligence Unit through the establishment of the Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the review of the Money Laundering
Act, restoration of the power of the CBN to freeze bank accounts
suspected to have been used for the commission of crime and the
establishment of the Joint
Nigeria-US Committee on Law Enforcement will all speed up the process of
Nigeria’s delisting from the Financial Action Task Force (FATC) list of
non-Cooperative Countries and Territories (NCCT).
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