Olanipekun Olukoyede, the Chairman of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), has called for the adoption of blockchain generation and synthetic intelligence (AI) to tune and get better an anticipated $88.6 billion stolen yearly from African international locations via illicit financial flows (IFFs).
During his keynote address at the Pan-African Conference on Illicit Financial Flows and Taxation, Olukoyede emphasized the excessive economic effect of IFFs on Africa’s development. He stated that the continent loses $88.6 billion each year to IFFs—a price range that would otherwise be directed closer to vital infrastructure, healthcare, and schooling.
Olukoyede highlighted hit recoveries, which include the $311 million connected to Nigeria’s former Head of State, Sani Abacha, who repatriated from the USA in 2020, as examples of effective global cooperation in combating IFFs.
To cope with the chronic problem of IFFs, Olukoyede proposed several key strategies:
- Collaboration: Emphasizing the significance of global cooperation, Olukoyede stated initiatives just like the Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative (StAR), a partnership between the World Bank and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), as critical in facilitating asset recovery efforts.
- Stricter Legal Frameworks: Olukoyede called for establishing sturdy criminal frameworks and potentially constructing them to enhance coordination at countrywide, nearby, and international stages.
- Technological Adoption: The EFCC Chairman advocated for the adoption of advanced technology together with statistics analytics, blockchain, and AI to improve asset tracking and recovery efforts. Blockchain’s stable and obvious ledger machine may be instrumental in tracking economic transactions, even as AI can analyze sizeable quantities of statistics to hit upon styles indicative of monetary crimes.
- International Pressure: Stressing the significance of strong advocacy, Olukoyede stated that preventing corruption might be useless without international pressure to ensure cooperation from tax havens and coffee-tax jurisdictions.
By enforcing these strategies, Olukoyede believes that African nations can notably lessen the financial drain resulting from illicit monetary flows and redirect these budgets closer to important developmental tasks. The Pan-African Conference on Illicit Financial Flows and Taxation serves as a platform for stakeholders throughout Africa to share insights, strategies, and high-quality practices in addressing the mission of IFFs. Olukoyede’s suggestions at this discussion board underscore the essential need for superior collaboration, technological adoption, and worldwide stress to efficiently song and recover stolen property in Africa.
