Africa is currently losing about 80 billion dollars annually
through Illegal Financial Flows (IFFs), with Nigeria accounting for 17 billion
dollars or 21 per cent of the figure, a UN conference heard on Friday in New
York.
Illicit financial flows are illegal movements of money or
capital from one country to another through tax evasion, money laundering and
smuggling, among other avenues.
The development, announced at an international conference
hosted by the UN has prompted Nigeria to push for the international community
to simplify the process of tracing, recovering and repatriating IFFs to their
countries of origin.
Nigeria’s position was canvassed at a high-level meeting on
“International Cooperation to Combat Illicit Financial Flows and Strengthen
Good Practices on Assets Return”, held at the UN headquarters.
The country’s position was presented by Prof. Bolaji
Owasanoye, the leader of Nigeria’s delegation and Chairman of the Independent
Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) at the meeting,
facilitated by the UN General Assembly.
Owasanoye said that Nigeria was “particularly concerned
about the challenges posed by the increasing scope and complexity of IFFs and
the slow pace of the process of recovery and return of assets of illicit
origin”.
According to him, IFFs are a shared concern that require
global solution as institutional reforms at the domestic level alone cannot
effectively solve the problem.
The ICPC boss said: “the success of Nigeria’s efforts at
combating illicit financial flows has been rightly acknowledged by the international
community.
“Our experience shows that IFF is a shared concern that
requires global solution, strong political will and support by governments of
destination countries to combat.”
He said the international community should demand political
commitment at the highest levels of government.
“Global standards should include mandatory national
inter-agency cooperation and information sharing by law enforcement agencies
and tax authorities to combat IFFs and corruption.
“The effectiveness of such inter-agency cooperation should
be amenable to assessment and evaluation of designated global monitoring agencies.”
Owasanoye expressed Nigeria’s support for the establishment
of implementable international norms and rules to comprehensively address all
aspects of IFFs.
Earlier in her remarks, the President of the UN General
Assembly, Ms MarÃa Espinosa, said that illicit financial flows were negatively
impacting the lives of millions of people around the world.
According to Espinosa, financial resources are taken from
investments in health, education, housing, infrastructure meant for the
well-being of people, leading to inequality and poverty.
She noted that illicit and illegal activities such as tax
evasion, corruption and other crimes often affected economic stability.
The UNGA president also called for the political will to
tackle corruption in all ramifications, adding that more must be done to fight
illicit financial flows to recover assets and to pay them back to where they
belonged.
During a panel discussion, the Chairman of the Federal
Inland Revenue (FIRS), Mr Babatunde Fowler, listed different aspects of IFFs to
include tax evasion/avoidance and dodging customs duties and levies imposed by
government on services.
Fowler highlighted several initiatives by the Federal
Government through the FIRS and other agencies, to combat the menace.
Other members of the Nigerian delegation are the Chairman of
the EFCC, Mr Ibrahim Magu, and the Director-General of the Nigerian Financial
Intelligence Unit (NFIU), Mr Modibbo Hamman-Tukur.
The meeting was part of the “Prosperity Week”, a series of
events organised by the UN General Assembly on inclusive development and
socio-economic inequality.
Several UN agencies and specialists from civil society
participated in the interactive sessions of the meeting.
No comments
Post a Comment
Kindly drop a comment below.
(Comments are moderated. Clean comments will be approved immediately)
Advert Enquires - Reach out to us at NigerianEye@gmail.com