THE Association of Bureaux De Change Operators of Nigeria, ABCON, and the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA, are collaborating to fight against money laundering and drug trafficking in the country. The two bodies made this known when officials of the NDLEA paid a courtesy visit to the National Secretariat of ABCON.

They discussed areas of mutual interest in the fight against drug trafficking and money laundering during the meeting.  Aminu Gwadabe, president, ABCON, said the association would work with the NDLEA to organise sensitisation workshops for BDCs on the connection between drug traficking and money laundering.

According to the ABCON boss, part of the role of his association is to ensure compliance, adding that a major challenge his members face is ‘vulnerability.’ “That is why we keep on training our members on issues like customer identification as required under Know-Your -Customer principle. We consider it important that we know our customers.

“One of the reasons why BDCs are vulnerable is because the proceeds of drugs is huge, drug business is in billions of dollars and we deal in dollars, hence we are very vulnerable. The perpetrators who have this proceed can run into our offices and that is why our members really need to provide information that will help the NDLEA trace the perpetrators.”

“Though we have training programmes with the Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit, NFIU, and Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, on these issues, we would also partner with NDLEA to organise training. We would request for resource persons from the agencies to participate in our periodic training for BDCs”, he said.

Gwadabe noted that empowering BDCs against activities of drug traffickers and money launderers is imperative given the critical role of the sub-sector in the economy.

On his part, Musa Maina, assistant director, NDLEA, and leader of the delegation, said though BDCs are under the regulation of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, their activities have a bearing on the job of the NDLEA, adding, that is the rationale for the visit.

He said that the agency would work with ABCON to educate BDCs on certain obligations which have bearing on the war against drug trafficking and money laundering. He said one of these obligations is record keeping.

He said drug traffickers in their efforts to launder the proceeds of their crimes operates in cash, and they usually avoid businesses that keep meticulous records and documents of transactions while preferring businesses that deals in cash and does not keep record of transactions.

– Jun. 8, 2018 @ 16:05 GMT |