Stakeholders in the financial sector have released a communique that will ensure the blacklisting of criminals in the financial sector.
The communique was issued by the participants at the Information Security Society of Africa-Nigeria cybersecurity roundtable in Lagos, with the theme, ‘Re-thinking corporate governance rules on money transfers.
The stakeholders comprising representatives from Deposit Money Banks, FinTechs, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, FBI, Central Bank of Nigeria, Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System Plc, Internet Service Providers (Huawei), tech companies, cybersecurity companies and legal practitioners gave the communique at the end of the event.
Part of the communiqué stated, “Committee agreed on the need to create effective blacklists of criminals in the financial sector. Once they have committed any infraction anywhere within the industry, they should be blacklisted industry-wide.”
In the communiqué, while advocating for inclusiveness, it stated that, ‘CBN should not shut out the crypto operators and dealers. Many of the proceeds of fraud get converted to crypto currency and the funds trail thus disappears into that space. Greater regulatory attention and torch lighting is required to ensure cryptocurrency does not become a hiding place for proceeds of crime.”
The stakeholders also sought for reward for whistleblowers.
They said, “If a person or an organisation reports or prevents a fraud, CBN should reward them by getting the beneficiary of that action – account holder or bank – to pay the whistleblower a token. This would encourage critical and beneficial information flow. Conversely, there should be sanctions for deliberately giving wrong information.”
The President, ISSAN, Dr. David Isiavwe, said there was no doubt that digital payments were growing year on year.
He said, “This trend is expected to be sustained in the nearest foreseeable future. Fintechs therefore have a critical role to play in the future of financial services. The more you innovate, the more you need to automate the attendant controls and ensure that they are strictly monitored.”
