The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has described the private sector in Nigeria as the “main harbinger of fraud and corruption,” in the country.

Chairman, EFCC, Mr. Ibrahim Lamorde, who said this while speaking during the launch of the Ernst & Young West Africa’s Global Fraud Survey in Lagos yesterday, expressed concern that almost all the high profile corruption and fraud cases investigated by the commission were connected to the private sector.

Lamorde added: “Virtually all the high profile corruption and fraud cases investigated by the commission have elements of strong private sector conspiracy and connivance. You will recall the roles played by bank chief executives and their top management which led to the crash of the stock market.

“They deliberately misstated their financial activities to lure unsuspecting members of the public to buy their shares at premium. Members of the public lost billions of naira and are yet to recover from that. Some of them even converted huge bank resources, including depositors’ funds to personal assets. Their conduct led to perhaps, the biggest bank fraud in our country today. Of course some of them are still facing trial today.”

Lamorde who advised accounting firms in the country to embrace integrity and professionalism, partly heaped the blame on failures of accounting firms to carry out their duty diligently.

“Some of these things (fraud and corruption) cannot be done without active connivance or collusion of accountants. Maybe they don’t even do the jobs they are assigned to,” he declared.

However, he pointed out that following the incidence, corporate boards and their top management are increasingly becoming conscious of the need to integrate anti-corruption agenda in their corporate business plan.

Lamorde cited a recent African Union report which showed that corruption drains $140 billion or about 25 per cent of the continent’s Gross Domestic Product.
“This is very significant and that is part of the reasons why we have failures in governments, insurgences and conflicts in Africa. There is a correlation between poverty and corruption in Africa. The African Development Bank said recently that approximately, 50 per cent of the tax revenue for Africa is taken away through fraud and corruption. That is equally very disturbing.

“Another very disturbing statistics showed that out of about 840 million people in Africa, over half of them live on less than $1 a day, which is so bad,” the EFCC boss said.

He stressed the need to address challenges of prosecuting anti-corruption cases in this country, saying that “as long as we don’t address some of these issues, the problem will still be there.”

Lamorde added: “Prosecutors in Africa and a lot of development countries need to bring a lot of innovation into their work in terms of fighting corruption. Fighting corruption is a special task that requires a lot of courage and expertise.

Source: Thisday (written by Obinna Chima)