The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has partnered with the National Lottery Trust Fund to combat corruption in the lottery industry.
This is according to a statement put out by the EFCC on Tuesday, on its website.
The partnership was disclosed by the Executive Chairman of the EFCC, Abdulrasheed Bawa, during a courtesy visit to the Commission’s headquarters in Abuja by Dr Bello Maigari, the Executive Secretary of the National Lottery Trust Fund.
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According to the statement, Maigari called on the EFCC to play a role in the recovery of statutory remittances due to the industry. He decried the nonchalant attitude of licensed lottery and gaming companies in fulfilling their obligations to the government which he said, has put intervention programs of the Trust Fund at risk.
Maigari also called on the EFCC to help recover the huge lottery and gaming revenues illegally held by Value Added Services operators.
“NLTF will do everything humanly possible to safeguard lottery as a national asset and will continue to support the work of the EFCC to achieve success for the good of the nation,” he said.
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Responding, the EFCC Chairman reiterated the Commission’s resolve to work with relevant stakeholders to recover revenue due to the industry.
“Some of the issues you raised, I must say that they are very worrisome; the EFCC has never shied away from doing our work, most especially when it comes to economic crimes, we will try as much as we can to work with major stakeholders to address those issues.
When we came on board, this was one of the first things that we actually looked at, Lottery and tax; and we have a team that actually deal with that. Recently we designated an officer who handles this kind of issue, and presently we are doing a review of some of those cases,” Bawa stated.
The EFCC Chairman also stressed that aside from looking at revenue losses, “We are also not unmindful of the fact that lottery components are being used as avenues for money laundering; so, we are looking at the criminality aspect.”
READ: EFCC moves to detect government agencies vulnerable to fraud
What you need to know
Recall that Nairametrics recently reported that the EFCC said it had started the process of carrying out a fraud risk assessment on Federal Government agencies as part of efforts to fight corruption in the country.
But this same EFCC a case was reported in Benin zone about a company not paying taxes, Frauding their workers. What do they do about?