Money Laundering and Trans-organised Financial Crime in Nigeria: Collaboration of the Local and Foreign Capitalist Elites

Nigeria loses US$600 million annually to money laundering. Between the mid-1980s and 1999, Nigeria lost US$100billion to money laundering. In the so acclaimed democratic era, between 2001 and 2004, the country lost an estimated US$25billion to money laundering. Nigerians who specialise in international money transfer have also extorted about US$357,142,857 from overseas victims. However, such illegal inflow and outflow of huge amount of money that has contributed to the impoverishment of the Nigerian economy cannot be easily perpetrated, without the cooperation, collaboration or at the very least, connivance of the professionals, particularly accountants. Yet, the various statutory provisions, companies’ and professional bodies’ Acts locally and internationally, all combined to place the responsibility on the accountants and auditors to detect and report cases of suspected money laundering and other financial crimes to the regulators. This paper develops theories of money laundering and the professions, particularly accountancy and utilizes archival documents to provide the evidence which suggests the role of the accountants in acting as the advisers and vectors of the ruling elites, politicians, public officials and their multinational corporations and other foreign capitalists’ collaborators in siphoning the collective wealth of Nigeria into the individual private bank accounts abroad. The paper further provides the evidence, which suggests that, the successive Nigerian governments, the ‘good governance’, ‘accountability’ and ‘transparency’-preaching Western economic powers, and the ‘ethical conduct’ and ‘transparency’-preaching accountancy bodies (local and foreign) have been reluctant to investigate or prosecute the culprits and erring members within their borders or associations in the face of the evidence of these local and trans-organized financial crimes in Nigeria.