EFCC advises travelers to observe 10, 000 dollars cash limit, blames cash-based economy for Nigeria’s fraud

EFCC’s Secretary, Mr. Emmanuel Akomaye, gave the advice in Abuja on Sunday while fielding questions at a forum of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).

He said that persons who failed to adhere to the law could face conviction and the forfeiture of not less than 25 per cent of the cash they were carrying.

 ``You are not supposed to travel out of Nigeria with cash of more than 10, 000 dollars, except you declare that information to the Customs officers either at the airports or any of the land borders.

``Early last year, there was an American citizen who was travelling with I think about 45,000 or 50,000 dollars, the gentleman refused or neglected to declare it.

``The law says that besides getting you convicted and sentenced to prison, you will also forfeit not less than 25 per cent of what you were carrying.

``You are at liberty to carry more than 10, 000 dollars, but you must declare that information also, you may be asked to explain the source of money and why you will be carrying so much cash with you.’’
 
Akomaye also said that it was important that Nigerians adhered to this rule so as to aid the EFCC in the fight against money laundering.

He said money laundering was a complex crime that manifested in various dimensions, hence the need for all Nigerians to help the agency to reduce it to its barest minimum.

He said that the EFCC drives the Enforcement of Money Laundering law and terrorism financing in collaboration with other agencies.

The secretary noted that banks had also improved their due diligence on the opening of accounts, stressing that awareness needed to be improved in ensuring that due diligence was followed always.

 ``You may have noticed that over the last one or two years, before you can operate an account, the bank asks you all manner of information; details of your profile; what we call customer due diligence. They must do that because there were cases in the past in which, you give your address as this NAN office and it turns out to be one mighty forest.

``That is hardly possible today, the reason is, every account you open, they assign an account officer who must, as a matter of responsibility, verify the information you have supplied.

``If you declared that this is your residence or your official residence, the account officer assigned to that account has a responsibility to do due diligence on that information.

``If he or she does not, and it happened that, that customer commits a crime bordering on money laundering, the accounts officer is as guilty as the holder of the account.”

Akomaye also noted that the improvement seen in due diligence of customers in the last two years was a result of collaboration between the EFCC and financial institutions.




EFCC BLAMES NIGERIA’S FRAUD, TERRORISM AND DRUG VULNERABILITY ON CASH-BASED ECONOMY



The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on Sunday in Abuja, blamed the nation’s vulnerability to fraud, terrorism and crime on its operation of a cash-based economy.

Speaking in an interview, Secretary to the commission, Mr. Emmanuel Akomaye, said that the ease of cash flow occasioned by the cash-based economy made the nation so vulnerable.

He said that because of the cash-based economy, it was very difficult to track money as people carried huge sums of money in cash and did whatever business they liked without being tracked.

Akomaye said that if huge transactions were made to go through the financial institutions, they could be easily tracked and as such the nation’s vulnerability to such crimes would be reduced.

``We are really highly vulnerable and one of the key reasons is this; we are a cash-based economy and that entails that it is difficult to track money.

``Elsewhere, every transaction goes through a financial institution; you can hardly go to some countries and bring out 5000 dollars to make a transaction.

``It necessarily would pass through a financial institution, but here because we are substantially cash-based, it therefore means that it’s a huge challenge to track money as you well know that we carry huge cash here and it’s becoming a challenge.

``Even the terror problem that we currently have in the country, one of the challenges is to determine: how are these people funded? Some of the operations are very sophisticated.

"You can conjecture that the level of their sophistication and operation necessarily means that they are properly funded. I mean it’s not a poor man that drives a jeep of N5 million and blows it up.

``Definitely that is not a poor man, even if the suicide bomber is a poor man, the person who funded him must be a rich man and these funding comes in very complex and complicated variance.

``It could be trade-based; sometimes the money is meant for legitimate things, but it ends up in criminal activity.

``So to the extent that we are operating a cash-based economy and monies move so freely in cash in huge sums, it’s a challenge.’’

Akomaye also said that the ease of cash flow had also made the nation vulnerable to drugs trafficking in the sense that drugs could pass through the country and payments made in cash as no one could easily track such cash payments.

He said that such vulnerability had also exposed the Nigerian population to illicit drugs saying that although Nigeria was a trans-shipment nation, some of the drugs still stayed back and were consumed locally.

 
``You also know that we have become a very significant trans-shipment route for drug trafficking and any country with that type of situation means that laundering activities will necessarily take place.

``Because when the drugs pass through here, it means that there is a syndicate either sitting locally or elsewhere that is networking with those who are doing the trans-shipment.

``Of course we cannot run away from the fact that even as we are still largely a trans-shipment point, some of it remains and when it remains, it is consumed by Nigerians.’’

Akomaye said that because the syndicates that ran drugs business could afford to do business with huge cash, they invested the dirty cash in some other legitimate businesses where it could no longer be connected to drugs.

``People who are involved in that trade try to make that business legitimate because the proceeds from the drugs are invested into businesses that look legitimate to make sure that it is clean.

``That is the whole process of laundering; to make dirty money look clean. We are highly vulnerable and again you know that our border points are so porous; we have a very large border line.’’