About 70 percent of the financial crimes witnessed in Nigeria are transpired within banks or linked to their operations.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission accused on Monday.
Chairman of EFCC, Ola Olukayode made the disclosure.
He was speaking at the 2023 Annual Retreat and General Meeting of the Association of Chief Audit Executives of Banks in Nigeria (ACAEBIN) in Abuja.
Olukayode was represented by the Director, of Internal Audit of EFCC, Idowu Apejoye.
He said the banking sector was increasingly becoming a place of fraudulent financial activities.
Those unhealthy financial activities, he insisted, posed tremendous challenges and concerns to the commission.
“Broadly speaking, banking fraud in Nigeria is both inside and outside related.
“The inside-related fraud comprises outright selling of customers’ deposits, authorizing loan facilities, forgery, and several other kinds of unhealthy and criminal practices.
“The outsider-related ones include hacking, ATM fraud, and conspiracy, among others.
“And then the absurd one is when both collaborate, that is a collaboration among the bankers and the outsider.
“That one is the one that is absurd because when you do that, that means you are selling out the system.
“It is estimated that about 70 percent of financial crimes in Nigeria are traceable to the banking sector, this scenario is disturbing and unacceptable.”
Olukayode urged ACAEBIN to curb the anomalies by ensuring that there was a proper reconciliation of accounts every month by accounting requirements.
On his part, the Chairman of ACAEBIN, Prince Akamadu, said the association would work towards achieving some of the recommendations provided by the EFCC boss.
“That is part of the reason why we are having this retreat, to ask ourselves, to do an introspection and ask ourselves, given our position in the banking industry, or the executives of banks in Nigeria, are we doing enough?
“Have we done enough? What more can we do to help in sanitizing the system? Are there things the banks could do to help in sanitizing the FX in this country?
“By the end of this retreat, we are expected to come up with a communique and we hope to address some of the issues, one way or the other, that will address the role of banks in FX challenges in this industry.
“I will tell you something, I’m not aware of any institution, any sector that has done more in the area of KYC than the banking industry. But it truly goes beyond the banks.
“And I can tell you truly again that even at the bankers committee level, and even at the typical details of banks in Nigeria, these are areas we are looking at to see where there are leakages and to begin to block them.”
