The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) says about 90 per cent of money laundering is done through the real estate sector.
The commission\u2019s Chairman, Abdulrasheed Bawa, stated this while featuring on Channels TV\u2019s Sunrise Daily, yesterday,
According to him, although the sector is monitored via the special control unit, more needed to be done.
According to Bawa, \u201cOne of the problems we have now is the real estate. 90 to 100 per cent of the resources are being laundered through the real estate.\u201d
He said there are so many issues involved, but that they were working with the National Assembly to stop what he called \u201cthe gate keepers\u201d as there would be reduction in looting if there is no one to launder the money.
Bawa, the EFCC boss, gave an example of a minister who expressed interest in a $37.5million property a bank manager put up for sale.
He said, \u201cThe bank sent a vehicle to her house and in the first instance $20million was evacuated from her house.
\u201cThey paid a developer and a lawyer set up a special purpose vehicle, where the title documents were transferred into.
\u201cAnd he (the lawyer) is posing as the owner of the property. You see the problem. This is just one of many; it is happening daily.\u201d
The EFCC chairman also revealed that he receives death threats often.
Asked to respond to President Muhammadu Buhari\u2019s frequent \u201cCorruption is fighting back\u201d expression, Bawa said he was in New York, USA, last week, when someone called to threaten him.
\u201cLast week, I was in New York when a senior citizen received a phone call from somebody that is not even under investigation.
\u201cThe young man said, \u2018I am going to kill him (Bawa), I am going to kill him\u2019.
\u201cI get death threats. So, it is real. Corruption can fight back,\u201d he said.
On corruption in the civil service, he said there were a lot of gaps, especially in contracts processing, naming \u201cemergency contracts\u201d as one.
Bawa said, \u201cA particular agency is notorious for that. They have turned all their contracts to emergency contracts.\u201d
However, he said, EFCC has strategies in place to check corruptions, one of which is \u201ccorruption risk assessments of MDAs\u201d.
According to him, \u201cI have written to the minister and would soon commence the process of corruption risk assessments of all the parastatals and agencies under the Ministry of Petroleum Resources to look at their vulnerability to fraud and advise them accordingly.\u201d
Asked if the scope of corruption in the country overwhelms him, Bawa, the EFCC boss said, \u201cYes, and no.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) says about 90 per cent of money laundering is done through the real estate sector.The commission\u2019s Chairman, Abdulrasheed Bawa, stated this while featuring on Channels TV\u2019s Sunrise Daily, yesterday,According to him, although the sector is monitored via the special control unit, more needed to be done.According to Bawa, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":256887,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[688],"class_list":["post-266339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-front-pix","tag-front-pix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=266339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/256887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=266339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=266339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=266339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}