The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has commended the National Assembly for its zeal to strengthen the country’s anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism laws.
EFCC’s Secretary, Mr. Emmanuel Akomaye, gave the commendation when he spoke with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Sunday.
The two chambers of the National Assembly worked speedily on the laws last week by passing them through the second reading.
“ We have a problem of terror in Nigeria and we don’t need anybody`s prompting to tell us to do what we need to do to ensure that if any person is involved, the law should sufficiently cover his activities.
“One of the things which the terror bill is trying to address is that if you stay in Afghanistan and you are funding terror in Nigeria, this law should be able to cover that situation even if you pass the funds through multiple fronts.
“Every conceivable situation is covered so that you will not hide under the guise of the fact that the law does not cover that type of situation.
We have a law no doubt but we want to make it stronger.’’
Akomaye also called for support for the presidential committee on Financial Action Task Force (FATF) headed by former Head of Service, Steve Oronsaye, which he noted was working toward ensuring that Nigeria was not precluded from financial transactions by the comity of nations.
The FATF is a Paris-based global association of 186 countries demanding transparency before dealing in financial transactions between themselves and with other countries of the world.
It is meeting on Oct. 15 in France to determine whether Nigeria should be one of the countries to be delisted from the group, a development which could bar Nigeria from financial transactions with other countries if it did not fine-tune its anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism laws.
The objectives of the FATF are to set standards and promote effective implementation of legal, regulatory and operational measures for combating money laundering, terrorism financing and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system.
(NAN)