EFCC acquires device to track money laundering, terrorism financing

Andrew Orolua, Abuja

The International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) has provided the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) with a tracking device/application that will enable the tracking of organized crime, particularly money laundering and terrorism financing.

The application made up of a database, the agency said will be supervised by the National Central Bureau which is an interface between Interpol and national law enforcement agencies of countries through a i24/7 Gemini Project global communications system.

Within the commission, the application will be managed by its Information and Communications Technology department, it added.

An elated EFCC acting Chairman, Ibrahim Magu, who witnessed the demonstration of the new application at the commission’s Abuja headquarters, said a milestone had been achieved.

Interpol’s Project Officer, Noha Amer, who led the delegation to the commission, disclosed that the US was funding the project in four African countries, Nigeria, Niger, Mali and Libya in a move that aims to detect and interdict stolen and illicit funds by organized criminals, mainly in the area of terrorism financing.

She explained that the project will see to the training of the commission’s operatives on programmes that include, Interpol policing capabilities and standard operations. The training will commence after the installation of the database.

Amer further explained that the database plays an integral role and was at the heart of Interpol in terms of information gathering and sharing, adding that the “NCB is the cornerstone of Interpol in liaising with the law enforcement agencies of other countries, especially in terms of cross-border investigation, operations and arrest.”

She added that the database serves as a tool for timely dissemination of information, stating that the Interpol will equip the bureau with the necessary equipment to go with i247 extensions, noting that the i24/7 accommodates IT database.

Christophe Nakobyan, Interpol’s Project Officer II, also explained that the i247 platform as a closed group for law enforcement agencies is a safer form of connectivity than Yahoo and Whatsapp, and gives access to information sharing, with optimal level of security.

While noting the dangers law enforcement agencies face from hackers, he disclosed that “we have 10, 000 attacks by hackers per day, but at the moment it is very safe as no hacker has been successful.”

This is as he further disclosed that the Interpol receives over five billion request in a year in the database for information.

Nakobyan stated that the database will further advance countries’ cooperation to the extent that it will allow each organization share information and the information shared will be strictly owned by the sharing commission which will be at liberty to decide what kind of information to share, whom to share with and which service to render to other law enforcement agencies.