The Minister of Finance, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, has charged multinationals operating in Nigeria and other countries to block illicit financial flow from Africa.
The minister while speaking at the International Conference on Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) and Asset Recovery held virtually advised countries known for receiving illicit funds to cooperate with the affected countries to repatriate the funds.
She said highlighted some of the financial challenges affecting African countries, including Nigeria as tax evasion, organised crimes, abusive transfer pricing, and mis-invoicing, among others.
Ahmed said, “In Nigeria and across the African continent, we continue to suffer various forms of IFFs, including tax evasion and other harmful tax practices, the illegal export of foreign exchange, abusive transfer pricing, trade mispricing, mis-invoicing of services, illegal exploitation and under-invoicing of natural resources, organized crimes, and corruption.”
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“Here in Nigeria, we have taken proactive steps towards the recovery of stolen assets, in part through engagement with multilateral stakeholders; bilateral agreements on the return of stolen assets with several critical destination countries including the United States and Switzerland; and the establishment of an independent Financial Intelligence Unit within the Central Bank of Nigeria.
“We must work within our countries and across the region as whole to build institutional capacity on international taxation issues,” she said.
