The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, has revealed that some Bureau De Change operators who were just recently arrested in Lagos, Abuja and certain other parts of Nigeria were in possession of more than $6 million.
Abdulrasheed Bawa, the EFCC chairman who had made the revelation on NTA, remarked that the arrests were part of the anti-graft’s efforts to cleanse the foreign exchange sector.
While speaking at a Forex event, Bawa, who was represented by the Agency’s Director of Operations, Abdulkarim Chukkol, had stated that the EFCC’s arrest of Bureau de Change operators and currency speculators in the parallel market was not a rash decision but, rather a product of intelligence.
Chukkol had also said that the commission did not only recover some of the cash but secured their forfeiture to the Nigerian federal government while the culprits would be prosecuted.
Bawa had also mentioned the need for an active inter-agency and stakeholder collaboration, noting that a lot of the 6,000 registered Bureau de Change does not belong to the Association of Bureau De Change Operators of Nigeria and therefore are out of the reach of the regulators.
