The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission on Tuesday advanced reasons why it arrested some Bureau De Change operators across the country.
The anti-graft agency explained that the move became imperative to ensure it achieved its aim of sanitising the forex sector.
The EFCC’s Director of Operations, Abdulkarim Chukkol, disclosed this during Nigeria Television Authority’s breakfast programme, ‘Good Morning Nigeria’.
“At the EFCC, we work with intelligence and with other stakeholders; and when we talk of illegal forex operators you cannot just invite people on the street even though sometimes you could, but generally you do not have a choice but to make arrest,” he said.
According to him,the commission considers foreign exchange malpractice as an economic crime against the Nigerian state.
Going back memory lane, Chukkol explained that the commission had in 2016 established a full-fledge section known as Foreign Exchange Malpractices Section and for over 10 years maintained visible presence at all airports in the country.
The initiative, he claimed, was to checkmate incidences of bulk cash movement outside Nigeria.
“Through the commission’s presence at the major gateway into the country, many arrests of cash smugglers have been made and humungous sums in foreign currencies recovered.
“Some were arrested with excess of $6 Million (Six Million United States Dollars), others with $2 Million (Two Million United States Dollars) and we know that these huge sums were not meant to be used in buying goods but stolen monies being laundered out of the country,” he added.
Chukkol explained that many of the over 6,000 registered BDCs do not belong to the Association of Bureau De Change Operators of Nigeria.
He said, “The CBN guidelines are clear regarding returns by BDCs, but how many of them do this.”
