Operations of the Commission of Economic and Financial Crimes (EFCC) on Friday, raided the Wuse Zone 4 area of Abuja, looking for currency speculators at the stalls of exchange office operators in the neighborhood, reports PREMIUM TIMES.
According to an EFCC source familiar with the development, the anti-corruption agency has raided dealer-occupied venues to arrest currency speculators who are allegedly gobbling up available foreign currencies en masse.
How the commission operators tried to identify the perpetrators was not immediately clear to our reporter.
Although it is unclear if any of the moneychangers were arrested, a source said the raid was the result of weeks of surveillance in which EFCC officers monitored the operators’ activities in the neighborhood.
“The raid is the product of weeks of surveillance in which EFCC agents have been monitoring the activities of most of the Bureau of Exchange operators on the Wuse 4 axis,” the source said.
When contacted, commission spokesman Wilson Uwujaren was unavailable for comment.
Mr. Uwujaren did not respond to calls or text messages sent to his known phone number.
Last week, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) said that “taking money from banks to buy dollars” is illegal.
Speaking at the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting in Lagos, CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele threatened to ensure the arrest and prosecution of any perpetrators caught in the act.
According to EFCC sources, the commission would expand its operations to other parts of the country, especially major commercial cities such as Kano, Lagos and Port Harcourt.
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The source, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the press on the matter, also said that some of his operatives have been stationed at major airports in Nigeria to arrest perpetrators involved in buying available foreign currency. .
“The anti-corruption agency is said to be working on the intelligence that some forces with a massive inflow of Naira have mobilized resources and are busy buying available foreign currencies, especially the US dollar, to hoard or smuggle the same currency out of Nigeria.
“Some operations of the Commission have also been seen in the main airports of the country. Lately there has been a run in the value of the Naira with foreign exchange trading over N700 to the dollar.”
In recent weeks, the naira has continued to fall against the dollar. On Thursday, the naira plunged to over N700 to the dollar on the parallel market.