Magu Moves To Get Nigeria Back To EGMONT

Ibrahim Magu, acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), has set up a committee to make Nigeria’s Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) autonomous, ahead of the January 2018 deadline.

The move comes less than 48hrs after the NFIU was suspended from the EGMONT Group.

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The EGMONT Group on Tuesday suspended Nigeria for failing to comply with its demands for a legal framework granting autonomy to the NFIU.

The country will be expelled from the 153 member countries which provides the backbone for monitoring international money laundering activities and terrorist financing, if it fails to make the NFIU autonomous by January 2018.

In the event of an expulsion, Nigeria will no longer be able to benefit from financial intelligence shared by the member countries, which is a major set-back to President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-graft war.

In the lite of this, the acting EFCC boss constituted the committee to address the concern of the EGMONT Group.

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Magu named Abdullahi Shehu, a former DG of the Inter-Governmental Action Against Money Laundering in West Africa (GIABA), as Chairman of the committee, while Joke Liman, of the EFCC, will serve as secretary.

Other members of the group includes; Chidi Chukwuka, from the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC); Bamanga Bello, head of EFCC’s special control unit against money laundering (SCUML); Jamila Yusuf, CBN; and Udofia Akpan Obot, a former deputy director of CBN.

The Acting EFCC boss charged the committee to come up with a suggestions to re-position the NFIU for greater efficiency.

The committee is expected to make recommendations with respect to the funding of the NFIU’s operations, develop a career path for the staff of the NFIU, develop protocol for the protection of information and confidentiality, “specifically as regards the status of STR information and information deriving from international exchange, and also develop procedure for the processing of information held by the NFIU either deriving from STR or from international exchange for legitimate purposes”.

“By providing the necessary frameworks needed to coordinate the effective process of amendment of section 1(2) (c) of the EFCC Act to expressly reflect NFIU as an autonomous unit under EFCC so as to provide legal basis or clarity on its operational independence from the EFCC,” Magu said.

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Following the suspension, the Senate on Wednesday passed a resolution to make a law granting autonomy to the NFIU to avoid the expulsion of Nigeria from the group.

Nigeria’s joined the group in 2007, during the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

The membership ensured the removal of Nigerian banks from the blacklist of international finance.

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