The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Friday, released the Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) policy and procedure manual.
The manual aims to establish procedures and minimum standards to protect the CBN from being used as channel to launder money, finance terrorism and other forms of crime.
Money laundering is the act of directly or indirectly concealing or disguising any fund or property that is derived from the proceeds of an unlawful activity.
In the AML/CFT manual, the CBN stated that transactions conducted through correspondent banking relationship shall be managed in an accordance with a risk based; and know your correspondent procedures shall be established to ascertain whether or not a the correspondent bank or the counter party is itself regulated for money laundering prevention; and where regulated, the correspondent shall verify the identity of its customers in accordance Financial Action Task Force (TATF) standard; and where this is not the case, additional due diligence shall be required to ascertain and assess the correspondent’s internal policy and money laundering on money laundering prevention and KYC procedure.
HOPE MOSES-ASHIKE
