Chief Compliance Officers of banks have denied getting the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) letter directing them to provide bank account details of leaders of the National Assembly and the Judiciary.
A document, said to be from the NFIU and dated September 10, showed a request to banks for the information on the accounts of legislators and the judicial officers.
“Kindly provide the NFIU with a schedule (account names and account numbers) of the National Assembly, members of National Assembly and principal officers of National Assembly Service Commission, as well as all accounts of National Judicial Service Commission (NJSC) and their principal officers, including judges and other relevant politically exposed persons. Kindly note that your response is expected on or before September 13, 2019,” the letter said.
Though NFIU denied making such request from the banks, a source in one of the banks said he believed the unit backtracked on the request after considering the political implications of such probe.
“I do not want to talk about it because the NFIU has denied issuing the directive. But I think the denial was an afterthought. They have weighed the implications of such probe and backtracked,” the source said.
Another source from other financial institution said the planned probe may not be unconnected with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) team’s Mutual Evaluation planned visit to Nigeria later this month.
The FATF Mutual Evaluation for Nigeria is being conducted by the Inter-Governmental Action Group Against Money Laundering in West Africa (GIABA) and was designed to assess the implementation and effectiveness of the laws, regulations or other measures required to ascertain the effectiveness of the Anti-Money Laundering/Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) regime.
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Contacted, the GIABA Information Officer in Nigeria, Timothy Melaye, said he could not speak for NFIU.
But he confirmed that the FATF Mutual Evaluation will take off later this month and end in October.
The Mutual Evaluation is expected to provide information on the progress made by Nigeria in meeting its obligations towards the FATF demand for a complete set of counter-measures against money laundering.
This covers the criminal justice system and law enforcement, the financial system and its regulation and international co-operation.
The FATF is a global body that sets standard for AML/CFT efforts; like other previous evaluations for Nigeria, its team will carry out random checks at the branches of selected banks and other financial institutions across the country.
Also, the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN), on Sunday denied alleged plans to screen the accounts of judges and principal officers of the National Assembly.
Addressing reporters in Abuja, he said: “One thing I want to categorically state and make clear is that the NFIU, by its competency and capacity, is well placed to have information relating to accounts of individuals and institutions without any recourse to a third party.
“So, in effect, the idea of making a formal claim does not even arise because the NFIU is the custodian of the information and it is very well placed by law to analyse and have a very forensic analysis of the information at their disposal.
“The NFIU had indeed issued a formal statement to the effect that there was nothing of that nature taking place. There was no investigation; no cause for such investigation as it is. And if indeed there exists such a cause, there could have been no basis for a formal request for it from institutions because it is the institution that is legally, logically and inherently vested to do the job.”
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