AITEC BANKING & MOBILE MONEY COMESA 2010: COMESA bankers to learn from Nigerias Financial Crimes Commission

Nigeria, one of the world’s most notorious centres of cyber-crime, has had to develop extensive skills and capacity to fight the rising tide of online scams and money laundering. The country’s Economic & Financial Crimes Commission has developed a hard-earned reputation for skilful and rigorous pursuit of online criminals and AITEC has invited the Commission to share its experience with bankers from the COMESA region at this year’s Banking & Mobile Money Conference, to be held in Nairobi over 24-25 February.

Bala Sanga, Principal Staff Officer to the Commission’s Executive Chairman, will make a keynote presentation at the conference on the Commission’s recent initiatives and the results it has achieved. The presentation will focus on the banking investigations it has been doing as well as Nigeria’s Transactions Clearing Platform.

The Commission has worked closely with the Central Bank of Nigeria in mounting its recent campaign to clean up the country’s banking industry, using extreme measures like arresting and prosecuting offending bank CEOs and in come cases confiscating their properties.

Announcing confirmation of the speaker from the Nigerian Commission, Sean Moroney, AITEC Chairman and conference director, said East Africa’s bankers would be surprised to see how much they can learn from the Nigerian experience. “Through the work we have done in the Nigerian market we became aware of the pioneering work undertaken by the Commission in fighting cyber crime and felt it would be valuable to share this experience with the industry in Kenya. As the worldwide online fraud and money laundering tsunami is going to have an increasing impact in the COMESA region, we want to spread relevant knowledge to equip regulators and bankers to fight back effectively.”

This year’s AITEC banking conference will feature over 90 local and international experts, making presentations in four parallel tracks over the two days. The organisers have advised banks in the COMESA region to send teams of delegates to attend the conference so that they can benefit from the wide range of topics being covered.

The conference will be opened by Hon Uhuru Kenyatta, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, who will also be the guest of honour at a breakfast briefing for bank CEOs on success factors for mobile banking, hosted by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The event will include a specialised exhibition on products and services for the financial services sector, with over 40 local and international exhibitors.