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Business News of Tuesday, 23 March 2021

Source: www.today.ng

CISLAC: Nigeria losses $18 billion yearly to money laundering, others

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The executive director, Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), Auwal Rafsanjani, said Nigeria losses around $18 billion abroad yearly to tax evasion, money laundering and stashing of illegal proceeds outside the country.

Rafsanjani, who made the call at a news conference in Abuja, said that international financial intelligence coopted from ministry of finance, showed that around $18 billion was lost abroad yearly to tax evasion, laundering of money and other stashing of illegal proceeds out of Nigeria.

He said that unfortunately, the amount put the country at the forefront in Africa as the worst illicit financial flow offenders.

He said elaborated international fraud schemes involving reputable lawyers and other middlemen were used to rob Nigerian citizens of billions of dollars that should be used to counter abject poverty, insecurity and abysmal service delivery.

A case in point, according to him was the ongoing corruption in investor state arbitration between Process and Industrial Development (P&ID) versus Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Rafsanjani said that Nigeria was currently battling the arbitration proceeding conducted within the United Kingdom jurisdiction.

He said that if lost, Nigeria tax payers would lose $6.6 billion plus seven per cent per annum against it for damages in favour of P&ID.

CISLAC also called on the federal government to pass a legal framework around the management and utilisation of recovered assets.

Rafsanjani said that the delay in passing the legislation which the Nigerian government committed to in 2016 greatly undermined asset recovery and management process in Nigeria.

He added that it cost Nigeria billions in lost opportunity as international partners refused to engage because domestic recoveries continued to be mismanaged or worse.

This, he said was because the international partners were not convinced that recovered assets would not be re-looted.

He said that in order to ensure transparency, the government needed to establish a database that would contain details of recovered assets including details of persons from whom they were recovered and how the recovered assets were utilised.