Wed, 11/01/2012 - 3:55am

http://leadership.ng/nga/articles/12944/2012/01/11/money_laundering_frsc_seeks_ties_efcc.html

The Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) has indicated its readiness to collaborate with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in a bid to curb the proliferation of identity forgery and fight the menace of global money laundering.

This was disclosed yesterday by the FRSC Corp Marshal,  Osita Chidoka while on a courtesy visit to the EFCC acting chairman, Ibrahim Lamorde.

Chidoka explained to Lamorde and other top management staff of the EFCC that the old driver’s licence had been compromised by fraudsters within and outside Nigeria, a reason for the introduction of a new driver’s licence based on a robust data base with unique identification systems.        

He also informed the EFCC that because the driver’s licence was the most common means of identification required by financial institutions in most transactions, the new licence will stop fraudsters from operating multiple bank accounts. He urged the EFCC to support the new driver’s licence initiative by persuading all financial institutions to embrace it.

“We believe it was possible for people to open multiple bank accounts in Nigeria using different names because they can access multiple driver’s licence. That can be stopped if we use the new driver’s license.

“The implication of that is that the EFCC should get the entire banks’ customers to recertify their account details, working with the existing drivers licenses used for opening bank account. This means that any bank customer that does not have the new driver’s licence ought not to have an account opened beginning this year. In that way, people with multiple accounts using the old driver’s license will be forced to close them down,” he said.

In response, Lamorde thanked the FRSC for re-kindling the need for collaboration between the two law enforcement agencies and commended the initiatives that had gone into the design and introduction of the new driver’s licence.

The anti-graft boss agreed that identity forgery had been a big clog in the wheel of the operations of the EFCC and assured that the EFCC would do its best to key into the new licence regime.

Lamorde noted that good identity management system would greatly help the anti-graft agency in fighting economic crimes, and  urged the FRSC to always furnish the EFCC with vehicle registration details of exotic cars of suspicious and dubious ownership.