EFCC to penalise six banks over non-installation of anti-money laundering devices

Eric Ikhilae, Lagos

Nuhu Ribadu, EFCC chairman

Six of the nation’s commercial banks are courting the wrath of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) over their possible inability to meet the 31st December deadline set by the commission for banks in the country to install Anti-Money Laundering (AML) devices.
A source at the Nigerian Financial Intellig

ence Unit (NFIU), an arm of the EFCC told the Nigerian Tribune that the agency will not take it lightly with any defaulting bank as the December deadline still remains.

The source who would not name the banks concerned, said “with all we have seen, I am not certain that those banks will meet the deadline”

NFIU’s Director, Mr. Asishana Okauru was quoted recently as ruling out the possibility of a shift in the December date as the deadline had been shifted twice in the past. The first was on 31st December 2006 , it was moved to 31st March 2007 , before the last date was chosen with a view to giving banks enough time to install the device.

According to the source, “that the device if installed, will generate alerts that will assist in getting Suspicious Transaction Reports and other reports needed by the regulatory agencies”

Nigerian Tribune gathered the requirement was mandatory under the Money Laundering Prohibition Act, which requires banks to report individual transactions exceeding N1m and corporate transactions exceeding N5m to the regulatory agencies.

The Act also required banks in the country to install appropriate devices to frontally confront the menace of Money Laundering.

It was learnt that already, banks like Oceanic, Diamond, Spring and United Bank of Africa (UBA) have installed a variant of the device called InfrasoftTech solution manufactured in the United Arab Emirate (UAE) at a cost of about N300, 000 each.

Union Bank, First bank and Intercontinental bank it was gathered, chose another variant identified as Mantas Solution which costs about N400, 000 each.

Nigerian Tribune investigation revealed that the Mantras brand is adopted by foreign banks like JP Morgan, Barclays Bank, ABN Amro, Citibank and Merrill Lynch.

Skye bank has also chosen a different brand known as SAS solution, which the management was said to have chosen from among eight demonstrations made to her by different AML solution.

Investors embrace National Sports Lottery at Stock Exchange

Friday Ekeoba, Lagos

THE National Sports Lottery Plc has become a toast of investors since it was listed in the commercial/services sub sector of the Nigerian Stock Exchange last week.

Immediately the company’s 5.2 billion ordinary shares of 50 kobo each were listed at N2.90 per share, the share price rose by 14 kobo to close at N3.04 per share, and 3.29 million units valued at N10 million changed hands.

Analysts are confident about huge returns on investment in the technology driven lottery business based on its realisable business plans. The company, with a revenue projection of N10.143 billion in the first nine months of operation, is already popular with its lotto game where people win millions of naira on Wednesday and Saturday of every week.

NSL is the first company to launch SMS lottery in Africa and the second in the world after Camelot of England.

According to the management of the company, its Internet lottery would soon be launched so that Nigerians at home and in the diaspora can also participate.

The firm is already in partnership with Visa International while those using Visa cards would be able to use the company’s facilities from April 30, 2008.

Besides SMS and internet, NSL’s major operation platform would be through the POS terminals. A total of 3,000 i8550 POS terminals, the most advanced in the world from Ingenico, Paris, were said to have been deployed for the business while the number would increase to 50,000 in 18 months.

NSL is to commence operation with at least four of the applications in the rugged i8550 Ingenico terminals, which are airtime vending; electronic transaction processing such as acceptance of payment cards (debit/credit) for purchase of goods and bill payment such as NEPA bills, among others; and lottery.

Other potential uses of the terminals include money transfer, inventory tracking, pension payment, immigration purposes, congestion charging and airline ticketing/collection.