The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) says it is stepping up its efforts to crack down on firms and others that transact in dollars.
According to the EFCC’s Acting Director of Public Affairs, Wilson Uwujaren, the agency will not spare anyone or any businesses that transact in dollars.
“The ship has already left the train station. We have started a movement, and we are not going to relent,” he said on Monday’s edition of Channels Television’s Politics Today.
“The advice I will have for Nigerians is that wherever you see this kind of development happening, the onus is on you to alert the EFCC. We can’t be everywhere but I can assure you that once we have the evidence that people are violating the law, the EFCC under the leadership of Ola Olukoyede will not spare anybody.”
“The movement has started and we would not rest,” the anti-graft agency’s spokesman insisted.
Dollars Transactions: No Ban On Foreign Missions
He also clarified comments about claims of a ban on foreign missions transacting in dollars. According to him, the EFCC only issued an advisory as against a ban.
“What the EFCC has done is simply to issue an advisory through the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs to foreign missions operating in Nigeria. That advisory is based essentially on the commission’s observation regarding transactions, especially consular service transactions by third-party agents operating on behalf of a number of foreign missions that we have in the country,” he said.
“We felt concerned that some of these third-party agents were invoicing for consular services in dollars which to us is against the laws we have in this country.”
The EFCC spokesman said the naira is the only currency for transactions in Nigeria.
He said beyond invoicing in dollars, “a number of them went to the extreme of determining the exchange of naira in their transactions. That for us was worrying”.