Without transparent ownership of Nigerian and international companies operating within the Nigerian jurisdiction, the country will not be able to stop the bleeding through illicit financial outflows, Auwal Ibrahim Musa (Rafsanjani), Executive Director
Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre, has said.
He lamented that the illicit outflow is continually on a geometric progressive increase year on year, which costs Nigeria.
annually around 17 billion US dollars, especially its oil and gas industry.
He spoke in Lagos at policy dialogue on Beneficial Ownership Transparency in the Nigerian extractive sector,where he also said that Nigeria is already facing some sanctions from the European Union for the nonexistence of anti-money laundering legislations.
He also said:”While we see and hear of prosecutions of Individuals and entities involved in the #panamapapers leaks and the #wikileaks among others, there seem to be no legal framework that enables the convictions of all that was involved from Nigeria.
” Aside the fear of the international community, it is worthy of note here that concealing of the beneficial owners’ costs lives of our fellow countrymen as terrorists use international financial systems to sustain their operations.
“As long as wrong incentives and dysfunctional supervision dominate our national financial systems, consequences in the form of terrorism financing, trans-national organized crime, tax evasion and illegal enrichment of politically exposed persons will prevail.
“We believe that a collaborative partnership by relevant stakeholders in the beneficial ownership campaign will help give a voice to this simple but strategic endeavour that will help curb corruption in our financial, procurement and other strategic sectors and contribute effectively to domestic revenue mobilisation for financing development of critical sectors of the economy’
