419/Money Laundering: NSA Heads Harmonisation Panel
The Federal Government has established a committee to harmonise and strengthen government machinery in the control of advance fee fraud, otherwise called 419 as well as money laundering in Nigeria.
The committee headed by the National Security Adviser, Lt Gen. Aliyu Mohammed Gusau (Rtd), would also resolve all areas of conflict in the roles of para-military organisations in the fight against advance fee fraud and money laundering.
Gusau who disclosed this yesterday in Abuja at the Third National Seminar on Economic Crimes expressed the Federal Government's concern over the conflicting roles of the para-military organisations, which threatened to make the war against the twin-headed scourge inefective.
According to him, "the committee, which is under my chairmanship, is expected to ascertain if the conflicts emanated from the laws establishing the agencies or as a result of personality differences.
"The committee's work is progressing and it is hoped that at the end of the assignment the functions of the government machineries responsible for the control of economic crimes and money laundering, would have been streamlined."
He pointed out that the Money Laundering Amendment Act (2004) has made the fight against the nefarious act a dual responsibility of both the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the National Drugs Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA).
"The argument is that laundered money comes not only from narcotics but also from criminal elements and even from terrorist organisations. This dual responsibility has created its own problems, namely competition, lack of cooperation and unnecessary duplication of energy and resources in pursuit of similar objectives.
"Even our foreign partners and donor agencies sometimes find it difficult to know which agency to deal with in the area of money laundering," he said.
Gusau added that apart from the EFCC and NDLEA, other para-military organisations, by virtue of their enabling laws, were also involved in one way or the other, in the fight against advance fee fraud and money laundering.
"For instance", he said, "the Nigerian Police Force is primarily responsible for the detention and prevention of all forms of crimes in the country. It has a unit called Special Fraud Unit, which formed the nuclear of EFCC. "Similarly, the Nigeria Customs Service is involved in such economic crimes like smuggling, under-declaration of goods, fake importation of documents, among others.
It shares this responsibility with EFCC. "Even in the field of money laundering, the NCS is also indirectly concerned. This is because laundered money is sometimes used to import flashy cars, precious metals and valuable jewellery and antiques,"
While noting that the banking sector was not the only one guilty of complicity in advance fee fraud and money laundering schemes, he, however, assured that the EFCC was ready, equipped and sufficiently empowered to capture advance fee fraudsters and money launderers and bring them to justice.
Also speaking at the ceremony, Director of Banking Supervision of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr. Egnatius Imala, attributed the persistence of money laundering in the financial system to the failure of the Federal Government to criminalise the offence amongst all other serious crimes as well as the rigid nature of bank secrecy.
Imala regretted that the money launderers took advantage of the weaknesses in the financial system. He added that recent development in information technology have further made financial transactions relatively easy and therefore vulnerable to the activities of money launderers.
He listed weaknesses in the financial system enjoyed by money launderers to include: no required disclosure of the beneficial owner of an account or the true beneficiary of a transaction; no mandatory requirement for reporting suspicious transactions; use of monetary instruments payable to bearers; and patterns of evasion of exchange controls by nominally legitimate businesses.
Others according to him, are : limited or weak bank regulatory controls, extensive foreign banking operations, limited asset seizure or confiscation capability, limited narcotics and money laundering enforcement and investigative capabilities, countries with free trade zone, countries where dollar is readily acceptable, and official corruption or laissez-faire attitude toward the business and banking communities, among others.
Imala harped on the need to combat laundering of money from the proceeds of illicit drug business, which enables transnational criminal organisations to penetrate, contaminate and corrupt structures of government, legitimate commercial and financial system, and the society at all levels.
He warned that "unchecked money laundering activities might erode the integrity of the nation's financial system and adversely affect currency and interest rates."
Also, he said, "the money laundering activities are becoming increasingly more elusive, well financed and technologically empowered and have developed strong determination to subvert financial system, which are basically the pivot of legitimate international transactions."
He therefore advocated that efforts should be made to enhance inter-agency co-operation in the fight against advance fee fraud and money laundering.
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