EFCC targets banks, other financial institutions

December 7, 2006

In its continued fight against corruption, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, (EFCC), is to beam its search light on commercial banks and other financial institutions. This, according to EFCC, is boost its fight against the menace of money laundering and terrorists financing.

Speaking on Wednesday in Abuja at a two-day conference on Anti-money laundering for Bank directors organised by the Central Bank of Nigeria, Nigerian Financial Intelligent Unit and KPMG, a consulting firm, EFCC Chairman, Nuhu Ribadu said the commission had concluded arrangements to commence the monitoring and rating of all financial institutions to ensure they comply with its new policy.
“Soon, however, in line with arrangement made by the EFCC, the integrity of financial institutions will be monitored and rated independently and publicly in an attempt to arrive at a market-driven approach to ensuring compliance,” he stated.

Ribadu also said, to ensure strict compliance with its policy which entails the accountability and transparency of the financial institutions’ transactions involving money transfers in sync with regulatory and legal requirements, the commission created rewards for complaints institutions and penalties against non-compliant ones. The total aim of the policy, he explained, is to bring to the front burner the two key critical mechanisms for the purpose of effective fight against money laundering and financing of terror which includes: Know Your Customer (KYC) and Politically Exposed Persons (PEP).

He said, the essence is however to give effect to those mechanisms as couched in the binary sequence of capacity to detect and identify the nature of specific transactions and the capacity to discern the character of specific transactions.

In his paper, entitled “Role of Regulators in combating money laundering and terrorist financing,” Rune Grundekjon of Kredit Tilsynet, financial supervisory authority of Norway, recommended that for effective criminalising of the financing of terrorism and associated money laundering among nations, countries should ensure that financial institutions are subject to adequate regulation and supervision they are also effectively implement the Financial Tasks Force on Money Laundering, he stressed.

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