The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has said that the recent arrest of some Bureau De Change operators across the country, especially in Lagos and Abuja by its operatives, is targeted at sanitising the foreign exchange sector.
The EFCC’s Director of Operations, Abdulkarim Chukkol, stated this on Monday while fielding questions on a breakfast programme, ‘Good Morning Nigeria’, on Nigeria Television Authority.
Chukkol, who represented the anti-graft agency’s chairman, Abdulrasheed Bawa, was among other personalities invited to discuss the topic, ‘’Sanitizing Ungoverned Operators in the Forex Sector.”
According to him, EFCC’s arrest of BDC operators and currency speculators in the parallel market was not indiscriminate but a product of intelligence.
Chukkol said, “At the EFCC, we work with intelligence and with other stakeholders.When we talk of illegal forex operators, you cannot just invite people on the street even though sometimes you could, but generally, you do not have a choice but to make arrest.”
He stressed that the commission considered foreign exchange malpractice as an economic crime against the Nigerian state, adding that the commission, as far back as 2016, established a full-fledged section known as Foreign Exchange Malpractices Section and for over 10 years maintained visible presence at all airports in the country to checkmate incidences of bulk cash movement outside Nigeria.
“Through the commission’s presence at the major gateway into the country, many arrests of cash smugglers have been made and humungous sums in foreign currencies recovered.
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