EFCC Hails Anti-Terrorism Law

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 The Tide’s source  in Abuja recently..

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 October 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.