The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has said majority of estates springing up in Abuja and Lagos are used to clean dirty money.
To this end, the commission said it is on the trails of those using real estate to perpetrate money laundering and other financial crimes.
EFCC lawyer, Chris Mishela, made the disclosure during a training session for journalists on effective reporting of the economic and financial crimes in Benin, Edo State,
He said many estates springing up in Abuja, Lagos and other parts of the country were believed to be proceed of fraud and money laundering.
He said, “In Abuja, you see so many estates coming all over and we believe the source of this fund are unlawful funds. The funds are illegally gotten either from government or from international crime that is used to launder through estate business.
“Real estate is one of the designated and non-designated professions that is also under our obligation under the establishment to do a full disclosure.
“So EFCC is actually working to look into that dimension and the new money laundering Act has provided an opening for the government to look into the aspect of real estate as we saw under the Act.
“It is not an investigation that is going on, rather we have identified specifically that these are proceeds of crime.”
He explained that the training was to keep journalists in sync with the framework of new anti-money laundering Act 2022 and the role they were expected to play.
He added that the need to make the public aware of the expanded scope of the Money Laundering (Prevention and Prohibition) Act 2022 as against the repealed Money Laundering Prohibition Act 2011 necessitated the workshop.
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