Nigeria Exits FATF Grey List by Meeting 37 of 40 AML Standards

The Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) announced that Nigeria is progressing in combating terrorism financing and money laundering by scoring additional grades, removed from the FATF “Grey List”. 

NFIU has declared that Nigeria is included under compliant (C ) & Largely Compliant (LC) in 37 out of 40 FATF recommendations – removing itself from the partially compliant category. 

The NFIU also revealed that Nigeria’s commendable achievements were acknowledged at the 42nd meeting of the “Economic Community of West African States” (ECOWAS) technical commission — Inter-Governmental Group Against Money Laundering in West Africa (GIABA) — held from November 17th and 23rd in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

This recognition describes Nigeria’s commitment to meeting international standards and its approach to addressing financial crimes.

In 2023, Nigeria was placed on the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) grey list due to a rise in capital inflows and deficiencies in its anti-money laundering (AML), counter-terrorism financing (CTF), and counter-proliferation financing regime.

To this end, member states of GIABA and international partners, including the FATF, have commended Nigeria on these efforts. The achievement will further strengthen the country’s mechanism in combating money laundering, terrorist financing, proliferation financing, and other predicate offenses.

NFIU

A recent FATF plenary session acknowledged Nigeria’s effort to strengthen its legal and regulatory framework. As a result, five key recommendations were upgraded from “Partially Compliant” to “Largely Compliant.”

The specific recommendations that saw improvement include:

• Recommendation 23: Other Measures Relevant to Designated Non-Financial Businesses and Professionals (DNFBP’s). 
• Recommendation 24: Transparency and Beneficial Ownership of Legal Persons
• Recommendation 25: Transparency and Beneficial Ownership of Legal Arrangements
• Recommendation 28: Regulation and Supervision of DNFBPs
• Recommendation 32: Cash Couriers

NFIU CEO “ Hafsat Bakari” led Nigeria’s delegation to attend the plenary. She was determined to address the remaining AML/CFT regime deficiencies. Nigeria has been greylisted 3 times, which is enough for a country.

She also spoke about rising financial crime that is considered a threat to both global & national security, the interconnected nature of these crimes & the need for effective collaboration among stakeholders to address these challenges.