Abdulwahab Isa 
Nigeria is on the front line to equip other African nations with a view to deepening their Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs) to enhance their abilities to disrupt illicit financial flows connected to serious crimes.
A meeting for the purpose held on Tuesday in Abuja which had Africa nations in attendance, the Chief Executive Officer, Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit, Mrs Hafsat Bakari, drew the attention of FIU operatives from across Africa, to “The powers that financial intelligence units have to suspend or postpone transactions that are deemed to be suspicious.”
She spoke at the opening session of the FIU Suspension Powers Workshop for West, Central Africa and Eastern and Southern Africa Egmont Group (EG) Region organised by the Egmont Centre of FIU Excellence and Leadership (ECOFEL) in Abuja on Tuesday.
“This capability is a very powerful tool in the arsenal of not just FIUs, but law enforcement to disrupt the illicit financial flows that are connected to serious crimes” she said.
In the context of the modern, technology-enabled financial services industry, where funds are moved at the touch of a button, it is important that FIUs have these disruptive capabilities in order to ensure that criminal funds can be effectively frozen and seized.
According to her, “One of the key successes for the NFIU has been our ability to deploy these stop orders in the framework of our international cooperation via the Egmont Group to freeze and return funds that are linked to fraud, and in particular business email compromise.”
“Reducing the ability of fraudsters and other criminals to use their illicit proceeds reduces the incentives to engage in these crimes” she explained.
However, she believes it is also important to consider the ethical and moral limitations to the use of stop orders.
“In particular, as the underlying principle is that of suspicion and not objectively established fact, we must be wary of the risk that legitimate transactions, funds and assets may be subject to these powers. Additionally, without effective controls these powers could be subject to abuses.”
“This is why at the NFIU, we have established clear protocols and procedures for the use of stop orders.
“There must be a clearly demonstrated high level of risk that the funds are likely to be dissipated and/or that the suspicion of criminal linkages are established to a very high level of certainty.
Beyond these, we have also established other controls which ensure that no single individual can initiate and authorise a stop order and through the use of automation we have effective audit trails in place.
Lennaert Peek, a senior officer of the ECOFEL part of the Egmont Group, an international organization combating money laundering and terrorist financing said suspension powers is a powerful tool for FIUs to make sure that dirty money cannot travel through the financial system.
According to him, “Like 70% of the FIUs in the world do have the suspension powers and today we are sharing the best practices and challenges that comes with these suspension powers.”
With regards to the Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) other African countries taking advantage of the Suspension Powers, Peek stated that “It’s still a lot of work to do, so we are sharing also best practices today to inform the FIUs in the room how they can improve their system.”
“Our expectations are that more FIUs will use the suspension powers so the financial system within the region, but also globally, will be more protected than it is today.”
Mohammed Ahmed, chief of staff to the chief executive officer of the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit told journalists that “more should be done in the FIUs community to ensure that protocols and all that ensure that we track a lot of illicit funds and all that.
“The purpose of this workshop is to bring together financial intelligence units from across the African continent from West, Central, East and Southern Africa to help them understand how financial intelligence units can not only identify and track illicit financial flows related to money laundering and serious crimes but that they can also disrupt these financial flows.
“It’s not just about seeing the money but making sure that you are able to stop the money from going to benefit the individuals that are perpetrating these crimes and that you are able to recover them effectively whether for the victims of the crime or for the public purse as it is. So far so good.
These suspension powers are really about enabling FIUs to identify those suspicious transactions and to stop the transactions from moving from bank to bank or from country to country so that law enforcement has sufficient time to investigate the source of those funds and if necessary to bring criminal charges against the individuals or the funds themselves so that we don’t lose them.
