Naira redesign: More govs under watch for money laundering, says EFCC

The Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Abdulrasheed Bawa, on Thursday in Abuja said the said more governors are being monitored by the commission for suspected cases of money laundering.

Bawa, who briefed State House correspondents after his meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari on the activities of the commission, said the number of governors being monitored by the commission for suspected cases of money laundering has increased beyond the three earlier mentioned.

The EFCC boss, however, did not give the actual number of the affected governors under the EFCC radar or surveillance operations.

“We are monitoring everything, Nigerians are helping. Well, I don’t want to give you the figures so that you will not go and speculate whether they are in the north or in the south, but it’s important that Nigerians key into it,” he said.

Bawa praised the new naira redesigning project, saying the huge amount of the country’s currency that had left the hold of Central Bank of Nigeria had made trailing financial crimes difficult.

He noted that the naira redesign would be an opportunity for the government to regain control over flow of cash in the country.

“You know that there is an obligation of money laundering law that we have, in which an individual is expected to carry out a transaction that is above N5m, through the financial institution.

“There is also the threshold in which a corporate entity is expected to carry out transactions that is above N10m.

“This is because financial institutions are expected to be making currency transaction reports, and suspicious transaction reports to relevant agencies. With that, institutions like us will be able to monitor which funds are legitimate and which ones are not.

“Here we are now, in which 85 per cent of our currency is out in circulation and people are carrying out transactions above the thresholds as provided for by this provision over and above that we will not be able to monitor, we don’t know what they’re doing,” he said.

According to Bawa, these are the transactions that are creating and giving avenue to other forms of crime, including payment of ransom, banditry, bribery and other illicit financial flows.

He said, “So, we are happy with this naira redesign in the sense that it will give the Central Bank an opportunity of going back to square one, by the time they collect the money back to their system, then they are going to control the money that they will release to the system.”