The chairman, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mr. Abdulrasheed Bawa, has said that more than three state governors are on its watch list for alleged money laundering.
Bawa disclosed this yesterday to journalists at the State House after meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari in Aso villa, Abuja.
He said the naira redesign policy of the Central Bank of Nigerian is a significant process in the country economic recovery plan as it would help in the fight against financial crimes and other forms of corruption, cause the value of the dollar currently at N890 to crash to N200, help the CBN control the monies in the system and by extension, enable more money for people to borrow as well as
Recall that in the wake of the CBN’s announcement of redesigning the N200, N500 and N1000 naira denominations, Bawa had said that the EFCC was monitoring three governors for alleged money laundering.
Giving an update on the matter, Bawa, however, refused to put a figure to the actual number of governors under the EFCC searchlight for fear of misrepresentation.
“On the issue of the governors that we are monitoring, in fact, the numbers have even increased. 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.”
On whether the commission was using the Eagle Eye app to monitor governors who want to use illegal funds to pay salaries, he said “the Eagle Eye is an app, it’s a novel idea of the EFCC that we launched for the ease of reporting crimes to us.
“Nigerians can easily download it on their phones, either Android or Apple or whatever, and then they can send in complaints to us through the Eagle Eye, you can even take pictures and send.
“Let me use this opportunity to remind Nigerians that Eagle Eye is very important for those that are reporting the holders of these currencies that we know that are out there. So that is one,” he said.
The anti-graft agency chief stated that the amount of the country’s currency that has left the CBN hold makes trailing financial crimes difficult.
He noted that the naira redesign is an opportunity for the government to regain control over cash flow 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 five million naira, through the financial institution, there is also the threshold in which a corporate entity is expected to carry out transactions that is above 10 million in the financial sector and why is it so? “It is so 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 legitimate.
“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.
“These are the transactions that are creating and giving avenue to other forms of crime that we’re seeing in this country; payment of ransom, banditry, and all of that, payment of bribery to political actors, and the arrest.
“So, we are happy with this naira redesign in the sense that, it will give central bank an opportunity of going back to square one, by the time they collect all these monies back to their system, then they are going to control the money that they are going to release to the system.
“Then, of course, once the monies are back within the financial institution, it will help to further boost economic activities in the sense that there will be more money for people to borrow and then we on our own part, we’ll have the avenue of monitoring what we are doing with all these huge resources that are out there before that are now within the financial institutions.
“So it is a good thing for all of us, for the entire country and that is why we are calling on Nigerians to embrace the policy… to champion the cause of the successful implementation of this naira redesign,” he said.
