Ibrahim Magu, the acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission,( EFCC), has charged compliance officers of banks in Nigeria to be diligent in the discharge of their duties and to ensure that they play active role in tackling money laundering and other fraudulent financial practices in the banking sector.
Magu gave the charge on December 19, 2018 through Usman Imam, the Zonal Head of the Commission in the South-East, during an interactive session held with a cross-section of compliance officers of banks in the region.
He condemned the actions of some bank officials, who aid and abet money laundering activities and other such economic and financial crimes, describing such acts as “a sign of systemic abuse and failure on the part of such banks”.
“Those failed states we know today did not just fail in one day, their failure was a gradual abuse of systems, that we must guard against,” he said.
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According to him, the “interface” was as a result of several “wrong things, which we observed are being done by bank officials”.
“There is no major fraud especially money laundering that is ever committed without the connivance of the bank officials, and this must stop,” he said.
He further enjoined them to see themselves as critical to the progress of the banking sector, in order to attract Foreign Direct Investment, FDI, into the country.