Rivers State Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Worgu Boms has pegged efficient intelligence gathering as a sure resource to combating economic and financial crimes in the country.
Speaking at the 32nd International Symposium on Economic Crime at the Jesus College, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, Boms said Nigeria will benefit a great deal in global information and intelligence sharing as it battles the scourge of economic crimes if put in proper use.
He said, “Since economic crimes are part of the global transnational crimes committed in or between different countries, without being based on any particular location and facilitated through the use of internet technology and other techniques, the use of intelligence as the raw material for ensuring the detection and investigation of these crimes must correspondingly respond to the sophistication in nature and perpetration of such crimes.
“The extent to which we manage intelligence and protect the integrity of its sources, analyses as well as their proper utilization determines to a large extent the strength or otherwise of any initiative in the fight against economic crime. The positive use of intelligence to improve the efficacy of investigations and to facilitate the distruption of economic crime may constitute both the sword and shield in the arsenal in the fight against economic crime.”
Boms also stated that the Nigerian police which is “the primary agency established under the constitution and charged with the responsibility for the prevention and apprehension of offenders, the preservation of law and order and the protection of lives and property” can make great progress in the fight against economic crime and other corrupt practices in partnership with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) using high intelligence and surveillance techniques as obtainable globally as well as the powers invested on them by the law.
“As part of the statutory functions of the EFCC, its empowered to adopt measures to identify, trace, freeze, confiscate or seize proceeds derived from terrorist activities, economic and financial crime related offences or the properties, the values of which correspond to such proceeds; and the coordinated preventive and regulatory actions; introduction and maintenance of investigative and control techniques on the prevention of economic and financial crimes. The EFCC also has responsibility for receiving, requesting analyzing and disseminating to competent authorities disclosures of financial information concerning suspected proceeds of crime and potential financing of terrorism.
“From the existing legal framework on economic crime in Nigeria, it is evident therefore that the use of intelligence is the most potent weapon in the fight against crime. There is also in Nigeria, the money laundering prohibition act as amended, which contain clear provisions that make the use of intelligence mandatory in the detection, investigation and prevention of economic crime… the act provides under section 6 for special surveillance on transactions which have unjustifiable and unreasonable frequency or surrounded by conditions of unusual complexity or appear to have no economic justification of lawful objective or involve suspected terrorist financing. Transactions involving any of the above circumstances are to be reported to the commission by the financial institution or designated non-financial institution, furnishing all relevant information about the transaction including the identity of the principal and the beneficiaries and take appropriate action to prevent the laundering of the proceeds of the economic crime,” he stated.
The Rivers State Attorney-General however decried the Nigerian financial crime law which pitchs lawyers against their clients by mandating them to report suspicious transactions by their clients to the authorities.
He explained that it would be contradictory of the lawyers’ profession to act as both defender and attacker of their clients at the same time, calling for a review of that aspect of the law that makes Nigerian lawyers police detectors against their clients.
“I was here last year and reported then, that in Nigeria, the law now includes lawyers as non financial institutions and thus are expected to report their clients to the authorities if transactions with which they are concerned for their clients are suspect under the law. This therefore is another source of intelligence gathering, but for me a very uninspiring one at that. As I stated then, ours is the only profession in the whole world, not engineering, not medicine, not even the priesthood, but the legal profession that is charged with the enviable onerous and to me a defying duty of defending even the most scoundrel and despicable of persons accused of crime. To expect these professionals to report the same persons they are ethically and statutorily enjoying to defend to the authorities amounts to enjoining somebody to cry and to laugh at the same time, because as you know, when lawyers have big clients, they laugh, to tell them to report to the authorities, they’ll begin to laugh and that is very contradictory.
“Let the police do their work of investigations and detection, let the lawyer do his work of defending or prosecuting depending on where he is called, that way the coast will be clear for a pure and unpolluted investigation and intelligent gathering process. Some of these irksome provisions which put the lawyer as the defender and attacker, the money laundering act stipulate mandatory disclosure of transactions by financial institutions, the prohibition of anonymous accounts and the surveillance of bank accounts for the purpose of ensuring the detection and prevention of economic crime all by or through banks of financial institutions.
“We do not need to pitch the lawyer against his client to make success. If we remove that, we can still attain some milestone. No efforts therefore should be spared by individuals and groups in strengthening intelligence gathering and sharing between states in the collective fight against the global scourge of economic crime,” Boms noted.