Oritsegbubemi Omatseyin
Lagos — The Executive Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Ola Olukoyede has warned Point of Sale, PoS operators in the country, to desist from aiding fraudsters and money launderers in perpetrating financial crimes, noting that POS operators have become complicit in the commission of financial crimes, terrorist financing, ransom payments and money laundering.
He gave the warning when the delegation of the Association of Mobile Money and Bank Agents in Nigeria, AMMBAN, led by its National President, Oti Obioha paid a courtesy visit to the Commission`s Headquarters.
Olukoyede, who spoke through his Chief of Staff, Commander of EFCC, CE Michael Nzekwe observed that AMMBAN needed to strengthen itself as it presently lacks the structure and framework to curb financial crimes associated with the business the members do, thus, making it possible for fraudsters to take advantage of their POS machines.
He said: “We have realized that the issues of money laundering, terrorist financing, and even ransom payments are made mostly from POS machines. Your association needs to do more, by coming up with a structure and a comprehensive framework that will have records of all your operators, so that during the course of investigation, we will be able to trace, monitor and have records that can aid us.
“My question is, what is the impact of your association on the members? Do you train your members? Do you have records of the address of your members? I think you need to have more awareness and training for your members. There are even some POS operators who are actually fraudsters; they aid, conspire, give out information and abet fraudsters.
“Most times, in the course of investigation, when you find out that money was laundered through a POS operator, by the time you bring them in, they won’t even know the person who sent the money and who withdrew it-no records of the transactions-and no one is asking questions. You need to put your house in order and do more.”
The EFCC boss urged the association leaders to task their members on having financial records of every transaction and in having a record of their members across the nation and expressed the readiness of the Commission to work with members of the association in the areas of training, awareness creation and information sharing.
On his part, Obioha appreciated the Commission for granting the association the opportunity for the visit, stating that the activities of the members have a lot of financial implication which will involve close partnership with the EFCC.
He said: “We deem it fit to present ourselves to help and work with the EFCC in preventing money laundering and other kinds of fraud. We are at the grassroots and we observe that your institution is always inviting our members, so we wish we can have a partnership that can see to the training of our members on some of the issues like financial thresholds and the risks involved in some of our operations. So, we are here to help you curb the rate of fraud in the business we do.
“We want to collaborate in the areas of training, because most of our agents don’t know the rules of our operations. So, we need to partner in creating awareness.”
