GIABA Applauds Nigeria Over Anti-money Laundering, Terrorism Financing War

The Inter-Governmental Action Group against Money Laundering in West Africa (GIABA) has lauded Nigeria’s leadership role in the fight against money laundering and terrorism financing in the West African region.

GIABA at the opening of the West Africa Compliance Summit, 2022, held in Abuja, noted Nigeria’s mentorship role and contributions towards enhancing the qualities of mutual evaluation and Follow-up reports at the agency’s last plenary in Senegal.

In his opening remarks, GIABA’s director-general, Justice Kimelabalou Aba, noted that some recent steps taken by Nigeria, including the passage into law of three important legislation to address identified strategic deficiencies, are clear demonstration of Nigeria’s commitments in the illicit financial flow war.

“I also wish to congratulate Nigeria for winning two awards relating to its mentorship role and contributions to enhancing the qualities of mutual evaluation and Follow-up reports during the 37th GIABA Plenary held in Saly, Senegal from May 29 to June 3, 2022. Indeed, this is a recognition of the country’s leadership role in the region,” Aba said.

The DG however stated that the transnational nature of organized crimes, especially ML/TF and their devastating effects on regional socio-economic development and security call for greater diligence, commitment and effective cooperation and coordination amongst competent authorities and between the public and private sectors in the implementation of anti-money laundering and combating the financing (AML/CFT) measures.

He said to this end, “GIABA has adopted twelve (12) mutual evaluation reports under its 2nd round of evaluation, adding that key findings from the reports indicated that significant gaps still exist, especially with respect to national cooperation and coordination, supervisory regime and the implementation of preventive measures by reporting institutions which impacted adversely on the assessed countries’ level of performance, particularly under Immediate Outcomes (IOs) 1 (National AML/CFT Policies and Coordination), 3 (Supervision), 4 (Preventive measures), 5 (legal persons and arrangement – i.e beneficial ownership), and 6 (financial intelligence), thus contributing to their placement under the Enhanced Follow Up process”.

He said the focus on effectiveness under the current round of evaluation, couple with new developments in technology and other emerging issues such as virtual assets/virtual asset service providers, digital identity, fintech and regtech, foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs), and the focus on beneficial ownership issues will continue to shape the global compliance environment.

“These will no doubt, add to the current AML/CFT implementation challenges in the region. Thus, there is need for greater coordination and synergy between national authorities and private sector operators to enhance awareness of, and provide collective responses to the emerging ML/TF threats as well as leverage on the opportunities provided by technologies for effective implementation of AML/CFT preventive measures.

“It is against this backdrop that the Secretariat has organized this Summit to bring together critical players, particularly supervisory/regulatory authorities, financial intelligence units, financial institutions and DNFBPs to discuss some of these contemporary and emerging ML/TF issues that impact on the implementation of AML/CFT regime in the region”, he added.

Earlier, Nigeria’s director, National Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) and GIABA National Correspondent, Mr Mohammed Jiya, said that the theme of the 2022 Summit: “Current and Emerging Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Issues” was apt and timely because 3 out of top 10 countries in 2022 Global Terrorism Index (GTI) are from the West African sub region.