By Nkechi Eze
The Special Control Unit against Money Laundering, SCUML and SecFin Africa have resolved to strengthen their collaboration towards effective enforcement of Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) laws in Nigeria.
This resolve came in Abuja on Tuesday, April 29, 2025 when SCUML’s Acting Director, Deputy Commander of the EFCC, DCE Harry Tope Erin received a delegation from SecFin Africa who is on a scoping mission to agencies saddled with the responsibility of supervising and enforcing AML/CFT laws in Nigeria.
An official signed statement made available by the commission’s spokesperson Dele Oyewale disclosed that the coordinator for West Africa hub of SecFin Africa, Stephanie Berthoneau, in her remarks, said that “SecFin Africa project is a classical AML/CFT project funded by the European Union and supported by France and Germany. The project is aimed at supporting African countries to prevent and combat Illicit Financial Flows IFFs with a goal to increase domestic stability”.
She said that the meeting was to understand and explore AML/CFT in Nigeria and challenges facing the various agencies.
Erin acknowledged the importance of the mission which he said was to strengthen Nigeria’s AML/CFT regime, noting that SCUML is committed and open to collaboration. He went on to give an overview of SCUML, its mandate and current initiatives which include but are not limited to building solutions for operation and intelligence- driven compliance monitoring. He further noted the areas where the Unit can benefit from the SecFin project which include capacity building , integration and consolidation of SCUML’s infrastructure amongst others.
SecFin Africa with its objective to secure a robust AML/CFT framework against illicit financial flows in Sub-Saharan African countries has a 48-month life span from 2024-2028.
