The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, has revealed that it did not ban foreign missions from transacting in dollars as the anti-graft agency continues efforts to stabilize the value of the naira.
Making this clarification while speaking on Channels TV’s Politics Today on Monday, the spokesperson of the EFCC, Wilson Uwajuren, clarified that the commission only issued an advisory to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Naija News reports that Uwajuren said that the anti-graft agency was concerned that third-party agents were invoicing for foreign missions, while some went as far as determining the exchange value of the naira that would be used in transactions.
He said, “I think I will first have to make a little bit of clarification if you look at the media, I think throughout last week, a number of them reported about the commission banning foreign missions from transacting in dollars i think that was not the intendment of the communication by the commission what the EFCC has done is simply to issue an advisory to the federal ministry of foreign affairs to foreign missions operating in Nigeria.
“And that advisory is based essentially on the commission’s observation regarding transactions, especially consular service transactions by third party agents operating on behalf of the foreign missions that we have in the country, we felt concerned that some of these third-party agents were invoicing for consular services in the dollar which to us is against the laws that we have in this country because if you recall the CBN act section 20 sub-section one of that act states that the naira is the only legal tender in Nigeria which presupposes that that is the only currency that is acceptable for transactions anywhere across the country.
“But we found a situation where third-party agents working for missions circumvented that regulation by invoicing in dollars, beyond that, a number of them also went to the extreme of determining the exchange value of the naira, that for us was worrisome and so we had to bring the development to the knowledge of the foreign affairs ministry because we believe that that is the organ of government that has the responsibility, that knows the protocol, that has the channel of communication to bring this observation.”
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