Beneficiaries to receive money transfer proceeds in naira •CBN revokes licences of 20 BDCs

As part of its efforts to curb money
laundering, the Central Bank of Nigeria has
asked Deposit Money Banks to start paying
proceeds from international money transfer
firms such as Western Union and MoneyGram
only in naira.
Already, the CBN has revoked the operating
licences of 20 Bureau De Change operators,
which it said purchased “unusually large
amounts of foreign exchange from the DMBs
and failed to render returns of the
utilisation.”
The CBN, in a circular on its website, said,
“The affected BDCs did not render returns on
the utilisation of the foreign exchange
purchased and also failed to provide
documentary evidence that their purchases
were utilised for eligible transactions in
accordance with the relevant provisions of
the Money Laundering Act.
“Consequently, the operating licences of the
20 BDCs have been revoked by the CBN. Also,
the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission has been requested to investigate
the matter for the persecution of indicted
persons.”
The CBN, in circulars posted on its website on
Friday, announced new measures to tackle
money laundering, which it said was
weakening the naira and risked pushing up
inflation.
“Available statistics indicate that Nigeria has
become the largest importer of United States
dollars,” the regulator said in Friday’s notice
explaining that its twice-weekly wholesale
foreign exchange auction would be replaced
with a retail version requiring dealers to
reveal the identity of their buyers, according
to a Reuters report.
Corruption in the build-up to the 2015
election is partly responsible for the increase,
CBN Governor, Mr. Lamido Sanusi, said at the
central bank’s Monetary Policy Committee
meeting on Tuesday, adding that it was
“absolutely wrong” for bureaux de change to
buy hundreds of millions of dollars without
accountability.
“We have seen evidence of huge demand for
dollars by bureaux de change, huge purchases
of cash that are not accounted for and that
signals money laundering, and we’ve got to
deal with it,” Sanusi told Reuters by
telephone.
“It is a small class of people that has access
to huge rents, and that rent has been
dollarised,” he said, adding that the bank had
been monitoring portfolio outflows and
imports, and found that neither could explain
the surge in dollar demand.