Forex Crisis: SEC Pledges to Cooperate with EFCC

The Securities and Exchange Commission has pledged to work with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to ensure reduction in virtual trading manipulations.

Acting Director-General of SEC, Dr. Emomotimi Agama, said this in Abuja  yesterday  when a team from the EFCC led by its Executive Chairman, Mr Ola Olukoyede, visited him.

Agama said that SEC would cooperate with EFCC to achieve national objectives of making sure that illegality was not allowed to thrive.

”We believe this will be the beginning of greater things to come.

”Our desire is for us to strengthen the existing Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) we have and ensure it is more effective in dealing with current issues.

”Only last week, we met the fintech community and we made it clear to them that SEC will not condone illegal trading on any platform especially Peer- to- Peer (P2P).

”It is a dangerous trend and we cannot allow it to continue, this collaboration is very necessary for us to get out of this forex crisis,” the D-G said.

He said the Commission was planning an economic regulatory hub where requests would be uploaded and other regulators would respond immediately thereby reducing incidences of delay.

”We will do all we need to do to ensure our markets are free from manipulations. We will enforce where necessary to send a strong message that it is no longer business as usual.

“We are examining our virtual regulations to cover all areas and are open to reviews to have a better document and a well regulated market.

”We are striving to close all the gaps and this cooperation will enable us block every gap in our bid to regulate the virtual space and give comfort to Nigerians.”

Speaking, the EFCC executive chairman said that gorex malpractices and crisis were injurious to any economy.

He said that the role virtual traders played in destroying the country’s economy through their activities needed to be checked.

“We are enforcers and not regulators and that is why we need the SEC to ensure people play by the rules.

”We have done a lot in discouraging people from forex malpractices.

”We need to ensure that people play by the rules and ensure compliance in a bid to attract Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) to our economy.

“If people have trust in us and know people play by the rules, it will attract them and the EFCC is working to ensure people play by the rules.

Olukoyede said that the fight against corruption was a collaborative effort.

He commended SEC for its guidelines on virtual assets and pledged the willingness of the EFCC in ensuring compliance by stakeholders.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported that some management staff of the EFCC also joined in  the visit.