The Nigerian Financial Intelligence Service has announced that the Financial Action Task Force has approved the fourth progress report since placing Nigeria on the gray list in February 2023.
FATF is an international organization established in 1995 to lead global action to combat money laundering, terrorist and proliferation financing.
The organization had gray-listed the country due to increased capital inflows and deficiencies in combating money laundering, terrorism and arms financing.
The Strategic Communications Office of the NIFU in Abuja said in a statement on Friday that the FATF gave its approval at its October general meeting in Paris, France.
The NFIU said Nigeria now has a strong system of international cooperation to combat serious crimes, including asset recovery, strengthened the national coordination system to combat terrorism and effectively ensured that the nonprofit sector was not exploited. It added that it was determined that appropriate measures had been taken. Financing terrorism.
It read in part: “During the meeting, the FATF approved Nigeria’s fourth progress report since February 2023, when it added Nigeria to the list of monitored jurisdictions, the so-called gray list.” It’s dark.
“The report states that Nigeria currently has a strong system of international cooperation in place to combat serious crime, including asset recovery, a strengthened national coordination system to combat terrorism, and that the non-profit sector has access to It has been determined that effective measures have been taken to prevent “funding of terrorism.” ”
The NFIU noted that Nigeria has made progress in implementing its action plan to address the deficiencies identified in the country’s 2021 AML/CFT Mutual Assessment Report.
“Since its inclusion on the list, Nigeria has made progress in implementing an action plan to address the deficiencies identified in the country’s 2021 AML/CFT Mutual Assessment Report.”
Hafsat Bakari, Chief Executive Officer of the Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit, who is in Paris for the meeting, said: Thanks to this system, we were able to complete almost half of the items included in the country’s action plan to get out of the gray list. ”
In other decisions at the Paris meeting, the FATF also updated its gray list. Following the successful completion of the action plan, Senegal was removed from the list and Algeria, Angola, Ivory Coast and Lebanon were added to the watch list.
