The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has said that the development of the national anti-money laundering regulation is an important step in the process of establishing a complete system that will meet the Financial Action Task Force standard.

In a paper presented at the DataPro Inaugural Annual Lecture in Lagos, the Executive Chairman of EFCC, Mr. Ibrahim Lamorde, said the existence of those fundamental elements was expected to put Nigeria in a better position to derive benefits from continued technical assistance and opportunities from international experts and donors.

Speaking under the theme “Fighting Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing in Nigeria, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,” Lamorde, who was represented by EFCC Head of Compliance and Enforcement, Mr. Hanafi Baba-Ahmed, said the Federal Government had amended the legislation on the prevention of money laundering, terrorist financing and allied crimes in accordance with the FATF standard and had taken steps to put in appropriate structures to ensure their effective implementation.

The EFCC boss added that Nigeria had clearly demonstrated its commitment to subjecting itself to the mutual evaluation process aimed at facilitating effective implementation of international AML/CFT standards, as Nigeria had been placed on Targeted Review.

Going down memory lane on the status of Nigeria’s AML/CFT regime, Lamorde said, “The Inter-Governmental Action Group against Money Laundering in West Africa conducted a mutual evaluation of Nigeria’s anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism regime in 2007. The evaluation was based on the FATF 40 Recommendations on money laundering, 2003 and the Nine Special Recommendations on Terrorism Financing 2001, using AML/CFT Methodology 2004. The overall performance of Nigeria during the evaluation was Partial Compliance and Non Compliance on all 40+9 special recommendations.”

He listed some of the major deficiencies responsible for Nigeria’s abysmal performance as non existence of a comprehensive anti-terrorism legal framework; sanction regimes not proportionate and dissuasive enough; weak national and international co-ordination in the AML/CFT regime; absence of a centralised statistical data on ML/FT investigations, freezing, seizure, forfeiture and confiscation; absence of explicit legal protection of reporting institutions, among others.

Lamorde said in defining its National AML/CFT Strategy, Nigeria had taken into account the FATF Guidance on Capacity Building for Mutual Evaluations and Implementation of the FATF Standards within low capacity countries.

Source: Punch (written by Ademola Alawiye)