December 06, (THEWILL) – The Federal Government has refuted parts of a report by the Inter-governmental Action Group on Money Laundering in West Africa.
The group was established by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to help prevent and control money laundering and terrorist financing in the region.
The ECOWAS agency had in its report said that N18 billion was being laundered through the nation’s financial system annually by a terrorist group, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP)
The report also said that the nation’s law enforcement agencies lacked adequate insight into Boko Haram and ISWAP’s international reach, noting that the law enforcement agencies did not prioritise money laundering investigations.
But the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) disputed the report, describing it as untrue.
NFIU Chief Media Analyst, Ahmed Dikko, in a statement on Monday, claimed Nigeria’s counter-terrorism financing efforts “have practically moved forward since then”, adding that the story is “totally outdated and was based on a 2019 country evaluation report which is literally stale and irrelevant today”.
According to Dikko, “It is to the knowledge of the international community, our populace and the formal media organisations that several arrests were made through the ongoing Operation Service Wide approved by President Muhammadu Buhari at the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA).
“In addition all funding of violence from all sections of the country are being evidently analysed and reported to all relevant authorities according to law.
“It’s true that recently Nigeria fell victim to illicit financial flows but overt and far reaching efforts are being executed by the government to stem the bad practice.”
The ECOWAS body released its report to justify putting Nigeria’s Financial System under enhanced review process alongside other countries in the Sahel.
“We had formally faulted the report to the ECOWAS body while agreeing to partner with them to carry out further review processes to jointly attain global best practices on all counter measures against local and cross border violent crimes disturbing the entire West Africa presently,” Dikko said.
“All our neighbours have proofs of our exchange of terrorist financial intelligence with them real time”, he added.
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