Abdulrasheed Bawa, chairman of the Economic and Financial
Crimes Commission (EFCC), says real estate is one of the biggest ways through
which money is laundered in Nigeria.
While featuring on Sunrise Daily, a Channels Television
programme, on Tuesday, the EFCC chairman said about 90 to 100 percent of resources
are being laundered through the sector.
He narrated how the commission investigated a female
minister, who he said, bought $37.5 million property from a bank and deposited
$20 million in cash.
The name of the minister was however, not disclosed.
“One of the problems we have in the country is the real estate. 90 to 100 percent of the resources are being laundered through the real estate. Of course, they are being regulated but they are not enough in terms of how they give their returns to the Special Control Unit,” Bawa said.
“We investigated a matter in which a bank MD marketed a
property to a minister and agreed to purchase it at $37.5million. The bank then
sent a vehicle to her house to evacuate $20million from her house in the first
instance.
“The bank succeeded to put it in their system and paid the
developer and then a lawyer set up a special purpose vehicle where the title
documents were transferred into and of course, he is posing as the owner of the
house.
“Without the help of the banker, the minister couldn’t have
imagined collecting $20million from anyone with opportunity from the real
sector; she could not have thought of where to launder the proceeds of crime.”
Advertise on NigerianEye.com to reach thousands of our daily users
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