Nigeria Loses $148.3b to Illicit Financial Flows In Five Years

Nigeria lost a minimum of $140 billion to illicit financial flows between 2000 and 2014 mainly to crude oil and commercial activities mispricing, the House of Representatives said on Thursday.

This, it said, was based on the Report of the Global Financial Integrity in 2014.

The House also worried that Nigeria was ranked among the global top 30 countries having Illicit Financial Outflows by dollar value and in 2015, a total of US$8.3 billion was involved in the Illicit Financial Outflows.

Disturbed by this, the House mandated the committees on Finance, Anti-Corruption, Financial Crimes, Banking and Currency and Insurance and Actuarial Matters to investigate the problem and appraise the Federal Government’s current policy framework to curb the continuous loss of Nigeria’s’ revenues to illicit financial flows.

It also invited the Minister of Finance, the Heads of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), the Nigerian Export-Import Bank (NEXIM), the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and other relevant institutions to address the Committees on the continuous loss of government revenues to illicit financial flows.

They are to report on the measures to curb revenue losses, particularly the coordinated implementation of the automatic exchange of information standard, to prevent further revenue leakages, curb tax evasion and money laundering activities.

The House also mandated committees to appraise the Federal Inland Revenue Services (FIRS) current framework for identifying, tracing, preventing and sanctioning cross-border tax evasion and other illicit financial outflows;

These were sequel to a motion on needs to appraise Nigeria’s legal Framework against Illicit Financial Flows by Hon. Ochiglegor Idagbo.

The House noted that Illicit Financial Flows (IFF) is the cross-border transfer of capital illegally earned, transferred or utilized, and often consists of commercial money laundering, tax evasion and proceeds of corruption and criminal activities.

It also noted that the socio-economic development of Nigeria has deeply suffered due to the unabated cross-border financial dealings of the nation’s revenues resulting from Illicit Financial Flows (IFF).

-NATION