The federal government has tasked multinationals operating in Africa and foreign countries who have been conduit pipes for illicit financial flow from Africa to block the leakages.
The Minister of Finance, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed made the call at the International Conference on Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) & Asset Recovery held virtually.
She said the multinationals must develop processes to block illicit funds even as the foreign countries who receive these funds must block the funds from entering their countries as well as cooperate with the affected countries to repatriate the funds.
“In Nigeria and across the African continent, we continue to suffer various forms of IFFs, including tax evasion and other harmful tax practices, the illegal export of foreign exchange, abusive transfer pricing, trade mispricing, mis-invoicing of services, illegal exploitation and under-invoicing of natural resources, organized crimes, and corruption.”
She noted that asset recovery is critical to domestic resource mobilisation, especially in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Here in Nigeria we have taken proactive steps towards the recovery of stolen assets, in part through engagement with multilateral stakeholders; bilateral agreements on the return of stolen assets with several critical destination countries including the United States and Switzerland; and the establishment of an independent Financial Intelligence Unit within the Central Bank of Nigeria.
“We must work within our countries and across the region as whole to build institutional capacity on international taxation issues,” she said.
