Nigeria collaborates with W/bank, others to halt illicit financial outflow

Nigeria is collaborating with global organisations to curtail financial flows through the continent as Africa economy bleeds with an average loss of about $80 billion through the illicit cash flight.

A high-level collaboration between Nigeria on one hand and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank Group and other African countries is being worked out.

This was a major resolution reached at the ongoing Platform for Collaboration on Tax (PCT) Conference at the United Nations in New York.

According to the head of OECD Global Forum on Exchange of Information, Monica Bhatia, automatic information sharing had been adopted as part of proactive steps to curtail the IFFs from the African continent to developed countries.
“The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) specifically says that we must significantly reduce illicit financial flows by the year 2030. A lot of efforts are ongoing to achieve this and support developing countries to end the IFFs,” Bhatia said.
Nigeria’s Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, in her address at the conference, affirmed that the IFF was a problem that urgently requires global focus and actions towards the realisation of significant developmental progress for Nigeria and other developing countries.
“The IFFs are driven by the desire to hide illicit wealth, hide the proceeds away from the public eye and law enforcement agencies and also conceal the ways and means by which illicit wealth was created. This makes it difficult to trace the associated money flow," Adeosun said.

She said “Developing countries, including Nigeria, collect significantly lower levels of tax, as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), than wealthier States. This is partly because the income and wealth being created is taken out of the country illegally, without being taxed.”

Quoting the report of former South African President Mbeki’s High-Level Panel on IFFs, the Minister said Africa loses $80 billion annually to IFFs, with a significant percentage of the loss coming from Nigeria.
She disclosed that the Nigerian Government had engaged a leading international Asset Tracing and Investigation Agency (Kroll), to trace and track illicit flows and assets.
In addition, she said Nigeria had signed the Multilateral Competent Authority on Common Reporting Standards, which allows for the exchange of financial account information.
The country, according to her, is expected to effect the first exchange by 2019 as soon as the domestic legal framework was completed.

“Furthermore, as part of open government partnership, Nigeria has included in the national action plan a commitment to establish a public register of beneficial owners. To this end, the Corporate Affairs Commission, the custodian of Nigeria's company registry, is pursuing relevant amendments to the Companies and Allied Matters Act to comply with global standards.”