President Muhammadu Buhari has revealed that over $ 50 billion illicit funds leave Africa yearly.
Buhari, however, challenged Africans in the Diaspora to come up with suggestions on how to curtail the menace of corruption on the continent.
Buhari, who described corruption as a “cancer” that requires global efforts to contain, noted that it has negatively impacted the continent.
He said this in New York, the United States of America, on Wednesday, where he also expressed dismay that a 2015 study by an African Union panel led by Thabo Mbeki estimated that $50 billion illicit funds leave the continent every year, thereby stunting Africa’s development.
Addressing participants at the high level media launch of “Illicit financial flows and the fight against corruption: Curbing the existence of safe havens – the role of Africans in the fight against corruption,” organised by the NEPAD/APRM Nigeria on the sidelines of the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly, he further urged them to support measures against “safe havens” for illicit financial outflows from Africa.
President Buhari recalled that the negative impact of corruption on the continent informed the “resolve of African Heads of State and Government to remain committed to the fight against corruption,” and the declaration of 2018 as the African Year of Combating Corruption, with the overriding theme “ Winning the fight against corruption: A sustainable path to Africa’s transformation.”
Expressing appreciation to his fellow African leaders for the honour bestowed on him as the African Union Anti-corruption Champion to lead the continental war against corruption in 2018 and beyond, he noted that the change agenda of his administration “has overhauled, revitalized as well as institutionalized the machinery for an out and out fight against corruption and its agents, with a particular focus on illicit financial flows.”
Explaining more on how illicit financial flows out of the continent have continued to stunt the development of Africa, Buhari said, “according to the report, about $2.5 billion of the $50 billion of Illicit financial flows was in respect of commercial activities.
“It is obvious that the continent still battles with grand corruption at the highest level, with safe havens, opaque systems in many recipient countries and the outright willingness of some advanced countries to harbor stolen funds from Africa.”
Listing some of the negative impacts of illicit financial flows out of the continent to include draining of foreign exchange reserves, reduction of tax/revenue collection, poor investment inflows and escalation of poverty, the President noted that these “nefarious practices are being perpetrated by some of the 60 international tax havens and secret jurisdictions, with thousands of disguised corporations, shell companies, anonymous trust accounts, fake charitable foundations, money laundering and transfer pricing mechanisms.”
Buhari also noted that the “enforcement of the bank verification number has helped in no small measure to identify and curb the deep-rooted corrupt practices by looters of government revenue with multiple accounts.”
He added that he had “enlisted the support of multilateral institutions like the World Bank, IMF, security agencies, and friendly nations to locate, recover and help repatriate stolen assets.”
According to a statement by Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, Buhari affirmed that “machinery has also been set in motion for monitoring, assessing and reporting on the UN 2030 Goals on Sustainable Development.”
