An Assessment of the Transportation of International Anti-Money Laundering Regulations into Nigerian Laws

Abstract

The crime of money laundering has become a global phenomenon, and the ever-increasing connectivity that technological advancement offers means that funds are moved rapidly and anonymously traded, exchanged or legitimised through an array of financial instruments such as derivatives and futures. The outcome is an upsurge in the magnitude of illicit money circulating in the world economy, and this transnational dimension to the crime means that it cannot be fought in isolation, hence international initiatives aimed at containing it. However, despite Nigeria keying into the International initiatives through the incorporation of strict anti-money laundering regulations into Nigeria's body of laws, the misappropriation and laundering of Nigerian money has continued persistently. This paper appraises Nigeria's reception of global anti-money laundering initiatives with a view to assessing the efficacy of such measures within the contextual peculiarity of Nigeria. The paper finds that the existence of anti-money laundering regulations reveals a failure of the fight against corruption and allied crimes. Consequently, the paper propounds alternative methods to the fight against money laundering by way of better efforts towards the prevention of predicate offences to the crime of money laundering.