The ACAMS moneylaundering.com 24th Annual International AML & Financial Crime Conference was recently concluded in Hollywood Florida. This year we saw a gathering of the finest of minds across several industries including: Accounting Firms, Banks, Casinos, Consulting Firms, Credit Unions, Insurance Companies, Law firms, Software/Technology Providers, and so many others. Representatives from all over the world were in attendance including chief compliance officers and regulators from Africa.
The 4day event was packed with several sessions and discussions on how to tackle the latest vulnerabilities that the financial crime prevention industry is facing and to explore the best ways to overcome these challenges. Although there was not much focus on challenges in Africa, compliance officials from African countries were well represented.
“Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.”
Success in the fight against financial crime involves in-office teamwork, collaboration with international counterparts and an ease of communication between the public and private sectors. The ACAMS conference provided the perfect opportunity to forge reliable business relationships with key executives and form strategic partnerships with government agencies across the globe.
At the conference, I was privileged to meet and have a roundtable discussion with chief compliance officers from financial institutions across Africa, a few from Nigeria – particularly Heritage bank and the Assistant Director of the Central Republic of Nigeria. You can already expect that I had lots of questions and requests regarding the situation of AML/CFT on the continent. Mr Ademosu shared some information on the active involvement of several stakeholders in the country to build and maintain the overall AML/CFT regime of the country.
He mentioned that every other month, there is a meeting involving the office of the security adviser, chief compliance officers of financial institutions, several government parastatals like customs, drug enforcement agencies, immigration and other relevant stakeholders under an umbrella called Association of Chief Compliance Officers of Banks in Nigeria (ACCCOBIN). At these meetings, attendees raise their concerns and issues faced in their day to day business and there is a rubbing of mind and sharing of information and best practices to enable each sector pick up their slacks while also receiving the support they need to be effective.
“If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.”
There is also an interagency meeting which is held in Abuja involving all the government agencies. The goal of this meetup is also to make sure that all the requirements and activities needed to be done to maintain the efficiency of the county’s AML/CFT regime is up to standards. Nigeria was supposed to have had her mutual evaluations by FATF last year – 2018, however this was delayed till September this year because of the security risk the evaluators were not ready to face. There were some rail and airport runway constructions going on at the time and the evaluators had expressed security concerns if they had to come from Lagos to Abuja.
Mr Ademosu also gave positive update on the state of affairs with the NFIU which used to be under EFCC before. The Egmont group had frowned at the relationship between the EFCC and the NFIU, expressing concerns of lack of independency, which led to the suspension of the NFIU’s activities at the time. CBN has since separated both institutions and now have the NFIU administratively under the CBN whilst allowing her to still maintaining the independence of her operations.
The progress may be slow but it is happening for sure. The future looks brighter and we would continue to put in the work needed to help Africa become stronger and have a more influential position on the global front as far as compliance matters are concerned.
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