President Muhammadu Buhari has
signed the bill seeking to make the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU)
an autonomous body.
Ita Enang, senior special
assistant to the president on national assembly (senate), disclosed this while
addressing state house correspondents in Abuja on Wednesday.
By this, the NFIU would seize to
exist as a department in the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
“NFIU will now be domiciled in
the Central Bank of Nigeria, but as an autonomous and Independent body,” Enang
said.
With the signing of the Act, NFIU
has been empowered to receive currency transactions reports, suspicious
transactions reports, currency declaration reports and other information
relating to money laundering and extremists financing activities from financial
institutions.
The unit will also receive
reports on cross-border movement of currency and monetary instruments, maintain
a comprehensive financial intelligence database for information collection,
analysis and exchange with counterpart FIUs and law enforcement agencies around
the world.
The senate had passed the bill in
July last year while the house of representatives passed it in March this year
Last year,Egmont Group suspended Nigeria because of the “interference” of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in the workings of the unit.
The Egmont Group is the global
body responsible for setting standards on best practices for FIUs in over 131
FIUs from 131 jurisdictions.
It was founded in 1995 to foster
international collaboration in the exchange of intelligence by member states.
In December, Ibrahim Magu, acting
chairman of the EFCC, disclosed that the commission has granted the NFIU
autonomy.
“We have allowed NFIU to go. They
are operationally autonomy independent of EFCC,” he had said.
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