Executive Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Mr. Ola Olukoyede, has called on law enforcement agencies across the world to forge stronger alliances and collaboration among themselves to combat the monster of cross-border economic crimes.
He gave the charge on Tuesday, September 2, 2025 at Jesus College, Cambridge, United Kingdom while leading discussions on “Problems Facing Enforcement and Judicial Agencies in Dealing With Cross Border Economic Crimes” at the 3rd Session on Cross-Border Organized Crime and Terror.
The EFCC’s boss, who spoke through EFCC’s Director of Legal and Prosecution, Sylvanus Tahir, SAN and addressed more than 1000 participants at the 42nd International Symposium on Economic Crimes, cited sophistication and extensive network of criminals, increasing sophistication of digital technology, weak regulatory and enforcement frameworks across jurisdictions; tracing, recovery, and return of proceeds of crime that are stashed in foreign jurisdictions, differences in laws and regulations across jurisdictions, information sharing by international law enforcement organisations and poor national identity infrastructure as well as limited capacity of law enforcement agencies in the face of increasing sophistication of cross-border criminals, as monstrous challenges standing in the way of tackling cross border economic crimes.
“One of the major problems in dealing with trans-border financial crimes is the sophistication and extensive network of accomplices. Advances in digital technology make it easy for criminals to defraud their victims and move the proceeds of crime across several borders in a matter of minutes. Increasing sophistication of digital technology makes the tracing of proceeds of organized crime also difficult”, he said.
In breaking these hurdles, Olukoyede harped on collaboration as the most potent framework. “Collaboration is the only way the world can harness its resources to deal with cross-border economic crimes as no nation is spared”, he said.
He drew attention to the rising success of the EFCC in tackling economic crimes within and beyond the shores of Nigeria, owing to joint operations with agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigations, FBI, Canadian Mounted Royal Police, Interpol, among others. “We benefit from collaboration and joint operations with international law enforcement organisations like the FBI and I will recommend the model to the rest of the world”, he said.
The 42nd Cambridge International Symposium on Economic Crimes took off on Monday, September 1, 2025 . For more than four decades, the gathering has been an annual rallying point of policy makers, law enforcement agencies, judges, administrators and government functionaries in more than 100 countries to discuss topical issues on economic crimes. The Symposium will end on Monday, September 8, 2025.
