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The announcement of a stakeholders summit on anti-money laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism - being sponsored by more than 200 participants from Financial Institutions and Designated Non-Financial Institutions as well as officials of regulatory and supervisory agencies at Transcorp Hotels, Abuja this week - comes at a very inauspicious time for me. Inauspicious because I am already writing a handbook on ways that the Nigerian politician could easily launder his loot, successfully and effectively hiding them from Nuhu Ribadu and his men in the EFCC.
On
12th March 2007
, Nuhu Ribadu boasted that EFCC would track corrupt politicians money anywhere in the world. He said: "The laws have made it possible to trail and follow all illicit wealth. No such wealth can be hidden again today. It will be traced and recovered and the EFCC has the capacity and is in a position to trace all financial transactions locally and internationally. It is therefore fruitless to attempt to hide assets".
One may ask why I would help
Enterprise criminals of any sort, from drug traffickers to corrupt government officials to stock fraudsters to corporate embezzlers and commodity smugglers to evade Ribadu.
I am very much against corruption. I have hailed Ribadu as the
Nigeria
’s' equivalent of Giovanni Falcone - The Italian mafia busting judge. I like what Ribadu and the EFCC are doing - In the sense that they have improved the image of
Nigeria
in the eyes of the financial world. For example; on 23 June 2006, The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) at its plenary meeting, decided to remove the name of Nigeria from the list of countries and territories that are non-cooperative in the international communities' efforts to fight money laundering saying, “This recognises the progress Nigeria has made in implementing anti-money laundering reforms, including the establishment of a Financial Intelligence Unit and progress on money laundering investigations, prosecutions and convictions. In addition,
Nigeria has taken steps at the highest levels to fight corruption". The corollary to this is improved Nigerians rating in the TI list of the most corrupt countries - from 2nd in 1998 to 16th in 2006
However, I would confess to a certain perverted pride whenever I see
Nigeria receive a mention and occupy a pride of place in the course of my research on Trans-national Organised Crime and subsequent thesis on money laundering.
Take this example from The Laundrymen by Jeffrey Robinson: "For anyone confident enough to trust his cash to the evolving nations of
Africa
, the dark continent offers a legion of opportunities. Hard currency is king. Yet unlike many other fragile economies - For example,
Eastern Europe
- the Africans haven't just discovered it. They've known the potency of cash for decades and are very sophisticated when it comes to separating less sophisticated people from it." He continued, “And nowhere in
Africa has money laundering acquired the same state-of-the-art trademark as in the Nigerian capital. In a world where international fraud is an expedient source of foreign income, organized criminals in Lagos understand the sex appeal of dirty money so well that they've built around it highly lucrative scams".
Therefore, It is disheartening to note that while the Nigerian 419 street kid have been internationally acclaimed as smart crooks, our supposedly educated state governors are still being caught pants down at Heathrow airport with millions of pounds in cash.
While the street kids are always one step ahead of international anti money laundering technology, keeping in step with advances in technology and communications; the financial infrastructure that has developed into a perpetually operating global system in which "megabyte money" can move anywhere in the world with speed and ease. What with the offshore financial centres and bank secrecy jurisdictions as a key part of the global system with distinct but complementary and reinforcing components, many of which are readily amenable to manipulation by criminals. The Nigerian politicians - state governors’ still manifests abject stupidity and foolishness by following the crude but primitive method for laundering dirty money - the physical movement of banknotes using cash couriers and bulk cash smuggling and the acquisition of properties.
To illustrate what I mean:
Mr Alamieyeseigha earns less than $1,000 a month as a governor, yet the governor of the oil-rich Nigerian Bayelsa state appeared in a
UK court charged with laundering £1.8m ($3.2m) found in cash and in bank accounts – mince meat to the Metropolitan Police!
Gov. Joshua Dariye used one Emma Orji, a Nigerian resident in
London
to launder money. Dariye is said to have deposited large sums of money in Barclays bank accounts through Orji. Another player in this criminal scheme is Jolly Cole, to whom he made available the sum of one hundred and eighteen million naira (N118, 000,000.00) for the procurement of foreign exchange. About the same time the Governor made these funds available, he bought a property in
Abuja
for the sum of twenty-nine million naira (N29, 000,000.00) - Easily traceable!
In July of 2000, Gov. Joshua Dariye wrote a letter to the office of the Vice-President demanding about three billion naira for ecological purposes. The Vice-President’s office approved the sum of one billion, one hundred and sixty-one million naira for
Plateau
State
’s ecological needs. The said money was paid directly into account number: 001080032 at All States Trust Bank. The said account is Gov. Dariye’s personal account - What a shame! You are merely leaving footprints!
In his testimony to the Plateau State House of Assembly Committee, Ibrahim Lamorde of the EFCC said that Gov. Dariye was arrested by the Metropolitan Police in
London
the sum of eight hundred and thirty-one; seven hundred and thirty thousand pounds (₤831,730.00) were found with him. Lamorde told his listeners that the money was covered by a substance which tested positive for heroin. He also revealed that one hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds (₤175,000.00) and eighty thousand pounds (₤80,000.00) in two Barclays Bank accounts belonged to Dariye. The sum of nine hundred and eighteen thousand pounds (₤918,000.00) was found in yet another account belonging to Dariye.- This man must be living in the dark ages!
In 2000, the following sums of money were electronically transferred from AllStates Trust Bank into yet another Dariye bank account in London: thirty-three thousand, six hundred and fifty pounds (₤33,650.00); twenty-eight thousand, nine hundred pounds (₤28,900.00); twenty-eight thousand, nine hundred pounds; and (₤28,900.00). The sum of twenty-nine thousand, nine hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds (₤29,925.00) was transferred to one of Dariye’s bank account in
London
from Standard Trust Bank on
October 6, 2000
– This is simply primitive. You are merely courting Ribadu’s trouble! Can you blame the government if they close down AllStates Trust Bank?
Even the
Abia
State
governor whom you would ordinarily expect to be smarter has been implicated in a N2.7bn scam by the EFCC. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has named Abia State Governor, Orji Uzor Kalu in money laundering scandal involving over N2.713.500.00. With a lot of the said monies directly traceable to his or/and his companies or mums account within
Nigeria. Might he be suffering from megalomaniac Impunity?
Gbenga Obasanjo- the son of the president - was therefore wrong when he opined that smart crookswould never be caught by the EFCC. For even the governor of
Enugu
State whom he classified as one of the smart ones have been indicted by the EFCC and frozen his 4billion naira allegedly lodged in different accounts with another 172 houses in the country directly traceable to him. It appears Chimaraoke Nnamani reputation as a smart crook stops at his ability to steal from the government. When it comes to laundering his ill-gotten wealth, he is still a cave man!
Space and time would fail me if I go on about Peter Odilli, Sani Yerima, Rotimi Amaechi etc, etc.
Ill-gotten wealth or "Dirty money” is of little use because it raises the suspicions of law enforcement and leaves a trail of incriminating evidence. Criminals who wish to benefit from the proceeds of large-scale crime have to disguise their illegal profits without compromising themselves. This process is known as money laundering.
It’s worse for Nigerian politicians because the Swiss Banks are no more safe havens. According to reports the Swiss government is concerned that the past Nigerian leaders at all tiers of government had caused their country serious image problems through their money laundering activities in
Switzerland
. They have therefore declared that
Switzerland
was no longer a haven for Nigerian public treasury looters and called on the EFCC to make available to the Swiss Embassy in
Nigeria
the list of politicians suspected to be keeping money in the Swiss system for assistance and possible repatriation
For Nigerian corrupt politicians to use their wealth without any fear of Ribadu therefore, their illegal or dirty money would have to be put through a cycle of transactions or washed so that it comes out the other end as legal or clean money. In order words, the source of the illegally obtained funds is obscured through a succession of transfers and deals in order that those same funds can eventually be made to reappear as legitimate income.
To be continued...
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Posted by Robot| 27.03.2007 13:07