Anti-money laundering:
EFCC targets banks, other financial institutions
By DENNIS MERNYI, Abuja
Thursday,
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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