EFCC
Organised Crime: EFCC
EFCC
Organised Crime: EFCC Acquires Interpol’s Intel-Sharing
Application
The International Criminal Police Organisation, (Interpol) has
provided the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, (EFCC) with
an application that will enhance intelligence intel-sharing in the
tracking of organized crime, such as money laundering and terrorism
financing.
The intel-sharing application comprises a database to be
supervised by the National Central Bureau (NCB), which is an
interface between Interpol and national law enforcement agencies of
countries through a i24/7 Gemini Project global communications
system.
Within the Commission, the application will be managed by its
Information and Communications Technology Department.
An elated Acting Chairman of the Commission, Ibrahim Magu
witnessed the demonstration of the new application at the
Commission’s Abuja headquarters.
Noha Amer, Interpol’s Project Officer, who led the delegation of
the global police to the Commission disclosed that the U.S was
funding the project in four African countries, to wit: Nigeria,
Niger, Mali and Libya in a move that aims to detect and interdict
stolen and illicit funds by organised criminals, mainly in the area
of terrorism-financing, such as in the manner that it happened in
Libya.
She explained that the project will see to the training of the
Commission’s operatives on programmes that include, Interpol
policing capabilities and standard operations.
The training will commence after the installation of the NCB
database.
Amer further explained that the NCB plays an integral role and
was at the heart of Interpol in terms of information gathering and
sharing. According to her, “NCB is the cornerstone of the Interpol
in liasing with the law enforcement agencies of other countries,
especially in terms of cross-border investigation, operations and
arrest.”
She added that the NCB serves as a tool for timely dissemination
of information, stating that the Interpol will equip the NCB with
the necessary equipment to go with i247 extensions, noting that the
i24/7 accommodates IT database.
Christophe Nakobyan, Interpol’s Project Officer II, also
explained that the i247 platform as a closed group for law
enforcement agencies is a safer form of connectivity than Yahoo and
Whatsapp, and gives access to information sharing, with optimal
level of security.
While noting the dangers law enforcement agencies face from
hackers, he disclosed that, “we have ten thousand attacks by
hackers per day but at the moment it is very safe as no hacker has
been successful.”
This is as he further disclosed that the Interpol receives over
five billion request in a year in the database for information.
Nakobyan stated that the database will further advance
countries’ cooperation to the extent that it will allow each
organisation share information and the information shared will be
strictly owned by the sharing commission which will be at liberty
to decide what kind of information to share, whom to share with and
which service to render to other law enforcement agencies.
Other members of the delegation were Eleyatt Nahah, an ACP with
Interpol, Sylvester Uzoefuna Jnr, C Udendi, Emmanuel Handan, Akubo
Jerry and Chuks Nwaogbo.
Tony Orilade
Ag. Head, Media & Publicity