A bill for an act to amend the Proceeds of Crime (recovery and management) Act 2022 has passed second reading in the Senate.
This followed the presentation of the lead debate on the general principles of the bill by the sponsor, Sen. Idiat Adebule (APC-Lagos) during Tuesday’s plenary.
Leading the debate, Adebule said that the bill among other things sought to establish an agency to manage assets and properties reasonably suspected to have been derived from unlawful activities.
“It also seeks to create transparency, accountability and to ensure adequate protection for the recovered items,” she said.
She said that the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) 2022, made provisions for seizure, confiscation, forfeiture and management of properties suspected to have been derived from unlawful activities.
The senator said it would also strengthen collaboration among the relevant organisations in tracing and forfeiting properties reasonably suspected to be proceed of unlawful activities through non -conviction based forfeiture proceedings.
“It also governs the receipt and management of stolen funds which have been stashed in offshore banks and used to acquire assets in foreign countries.
“Generally, the POCA ACT 2022 is a significant effort to combat and crackdown on corruption, money laundering and other unlawful activities regardless of their location either within or outside of Nigeria,” she said.
Adebule further said that however, these enormous responsibilities in the Proceeds of Crime Act 2022 have been assigned to different agencies of government in section (4) of the Act.
“These agencies referred to in the Act as relevant organisations are all charged with responsibility to investigate, detect, identify, recover assets and prosecute the unlawful activities as contained in Sections (2, 3, 4).
“By these provisions in the POCA ACT 2022, these relevant organisations totaling 18, play the overlapping roles of the investigator, prosecutor, executor and exercising powers of recovery and management of proceeds of crime.
“These overlapping responsibilities makes efficiency, transparency and accountability difficult in the discharge of the core mandate of these relevant agencies, thereby depriving our country of the full benefits of establishing them,” she added.
Contributing, Sen. Sani Musa (APC-Niger) said, “I stand to support this bill and the support I have for this bill is that we should look at our existing laws, strengthen them especially in areas of recovery and management of proceeds of crime.
“When an agency, for example, like the EFCC, ICPC, is able to recover proceeds from illegalities, it is important that we strengthen those acts, that if those monies are collected, those monies should automatically go into the purse of the Federal Government.
“And if it is a recovery plan for a state, that money should automatically go to that state. I don’t think there is a need for us to create an agency to manage recovery of proceeds.
“But the existing laws that we have should be strengthened,” he said.
In his remarks, Deputy Senate President, Jibrin Barau, who presided over the plenary, said the bill when passed would bring about the desired sanity in the management of the proceeds of crime for the interests of our country.
He thereafter referred the bill to the Committee on Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters for further legislative action to report back in four weeks.
