“Today, I had the honour of opening the second extraordinary ministerial meeting of the Intergovernmental Action Group Against Money Laundering in West Africa (GIABA). This was a high-level engagement on the future of Anti-Money Laundering, Countering the Financing of Terrorism and Proliferation Financing efforts in the ECOWAS region.

Welcoming the delegates, Hon. Lateef Fagbemi, the Attorney General and Minister for Justice of Nigeria, highlighted the role GIABA plays. The outgoing Director General, Mr. Edwin W. Harris Jnr, commended the committee for their hard work and wished his successor, Hon. Sheku Bangura, the Minister for Finance of Sierra Leone, all the best.

In my address, I commended GIABA for their commitment to ensuring that member states are equipped against money laundering, terrorism financing and weapons financing in line with acceptable international practices and standards.

I urged them to see this meeting as an opportunity to reimagine how our regional institutions react to emerging threats and to our evolving realities, while expanding the frontiers of cooperation”.