Money Laundering and Trans-organised Financial Crime in Nigeria: Collaboration of the Local and Foreign Capitalist Elites

Nigeria loses US$600 million annually to money laundering. Between the mid-1980s and 1999, Nigeria lost US$100billion to money laundering. In the so acclaimed democratic era, between 2001 and 2004, the country lost an estimated US$25billion to money laundering. Nigerians who specialise in international money transfer have also extorted about US$357,142,857 from overseas victims. However, such illegal inflow and outflow of huge amount of money that has contributed to the impoverishment of the Nigerian economy cannot be easily perpetrated, without the cooperation, collaboration or at the very least, connivance of the professionals, particularly accountants. Yet, the various statutory provisions, companies’ and professional bodies’ Acts locally and internationally, all combined to place the responsibility on the accountants and auditors to detect and report cases of suspected money laundering and other financial crimes to the regulators. This paper develops theories of money laundering and the professions, particularly accountancy and utilizes archival documents to provide the evidence which suggests the role of the accountants in acting as the advisers and vectors of the ruling elites, politicians, public officials and their multinational corporations and other foreign capitalists’ collaborators in siphoning the collective wealth of Nigeria into the individual private bank accounts abroad. The paper further provides the evidence, which suggests that, the successive Nigerian governments, the ‘good governance’, ‘accountability’ and ‘transparency’-preaching Western economic powers, and the ‘ethical conduct’ and ‘transparency’-preaching accountancy bodies (local and foreign) have been reluctant to investigate or prosecute the culprits and erring members within their borders or associations in the face of the evidence of these local and trans-organized financial crimes in Nigeria

Adopting International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in Africa: benefits, prospects and challenges

This paper presents the findings of an empirical study on the benefits, prospects and challenges of adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in some African countries. A questionnaire was administered to gather data from respondents made up of users and preparers of accounting information using the Twitter social network. The objective was to find out the perception of users and preparers about what the benefits, prospects and challenges of IFRS adoption are in African countries. The results of the study indicate that IFRS adoption in Africa will have the potential to be beneficial to a wide range of stakeholders. The benefits notwithstanding, there are however, a number of challenges to be faced in the process of adoption of the new standard including the ethical environment in Africa. The study recommends among others that a rigorous IFRS capacity building programme should be embarked upon by all regulatory bodies, firms and training institutions in order to provide the needed manpower for IFRS implementation, monitoring and compliance

Linking Accounting/Auditing Environment and the Remittances of Africans in Diaspora

This paper investigates empirically the link between the inflow of Diasporas remittances and the environment of accounting/auditing in 10 African countries. The result using Spearman’s rank correlation indicates the existence of a positive relationship (correlation coefficient rs is 0.36), but the strength of the relationship is weak (significant level of 0.05). The quality of accounting and auditing as represented by their environment is a stimulus that could enhance the inflow of Diasporas remittances. The study therefore recommends that African countries should strategically and proactively refocus attention on developing accounting/auditing environment in order to attract reasonable volume of remittances

New numerical approach for fractional differential equations

In the present case, we propose the correct version of the fractional Adams-Bashforth methods which take into account the nonlinearity of the kernels including the power law for the Riemann-Liouville type, the exponential decay law for the Caputo-Fabrizio case and the Mittag-Leffler law for the Atangana-Baleanu scenario. The Adams-Bashforth method for fractional differentiation suggested and are commonly use in the literature nowadays is not mathematically correct and the method was derived without taking into account the nonlinearity of the power law kernel. Unlike the proposed version found in the literature, our approximation, in all the cases, we are able to recover the standard case whenever the fractional power $\alpha=1$.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figure

The Value of Business Networks in Emerging Economies: An Analysis of Firms' External Financing Opportunities

The paper argues that networked firms are likely to have an advantage in securing external finance in countries with weak legal and judicial institutions since it helps financial institutions to minimize the underlying agency costs of lending. An analysis of recent BEEPS data from fifteen Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries lends some support to this hypothesis. Even after controlling for other factors, firms affiliated to business associations are more likely to secure bank finance. Importance of being associated with business networks is particularly evident among firms who borrow from private domestic and foreign banks, as these new banks attempt to minimize costs of adverse selection. Networking however discriminates against the small and medium sized firms' access to bank loans in the CEE regions. Results are robust in both single cross-section and panel data analyses.business networks, agency costs, external firm financing, bank loans, transition economies, endogeneity

The Value of Business Networks; an Analysis of Firm Financing in Transition Economies

The paper argues that the networked firms have an advantage in securing bank finance in countries with weak legal and judicial institutions. An analysis of recent BEEPS data from sixteen CEE transition countries lends some support to this hypothesis. Firms affiliated to business associations are more likely to have bank finance while small and medium firms are less likely to secure it. Importance of being associated with business networks is particularly evident among firms who borrow from foreign banks, as the latter attempt to hedge risk in an uncertain environment. Significance of business networking however vanishes if institutional quality improves.

Sociodemographic factors in anaemia in pregnancy in south-western Nigeria

Background: Anaemia in pregnancy persists, especially in third world countries where poor diet, low levels of literacy, infections, infestations and cultural practices predispose pregnant women to being anaemic. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of anaemia in pregnancy and to identify the possible associations between socio-economic status and anaemia in pregnancy among antenatal care seekers at Baptist Medical Centre, Ogbomoso, Oyo State, Nigeria.Method: A total of 350 pregnant women were recruited at booking from the antenatal clinic of the hospital. A standardised questionnaire was administered to collect sociodemographic data. The subjects were stratified into upper, middle and lower socio-economic groups according to a scoring system designed by Olusanya et al. for Nigeria and other African countries.Anaemia is defined as a haemoglobin level of less than 11 g/dl by the World Health Organization.Results: The prevalence of anaemia in pregnancy was 58.0% in the study population. Anaemia prevalence was significantly higher among the subjects in the middle and lower socio-economic classes: 78.3% and 80.3% respectively (P < 0.05). The majority of the severely anaemic subjects (80.0%) were from the lower social class.Conclusion: The prevalence of anaemia in pregnancy was found to be high in this population. Low socio-economic status is significantly associated with increased prevalence and severity of anaemia. It is recommended that the socio-economic situation of women be improved. This no doubt will help to reduce anaemia in pregnancy

Symphony and Maintenance of Seized Ships: Experimenting U.S Maritime Court’s Practice in Nigeria

Maintaining and managing a seized ship is an important aspect of the Maritime Industry globally. In countries like the United States, measures have been put in place to ensure that when ships are seized in lieu of a maritime proceeding, such ships are adequately managed and maintained for that period. In contrast, when a ship is seized in Nigeria, there is little to no guarantee that the vessel will be maintained efficiently by the body responsible for its management. It is therefore essential to investigate the reason for such lack of guarantee and how it can be solved to improve the state of affairs in the country’s maritime sector. This research adopted a doctrinal method of research through analysis of statutory provisions as well as cases to use the power of reasoning to collect data from the use of Law textbooks, articles in journals, and various online resources. This paper aims to is to discuss the instances where states can seize ships, the procedure of arrest in Nigeria, forfeiture of ships and make a comparison to the procedure adopted in the Maritime Sector of the U.S, the challenges faced by the Nigerian Maritime Sector and recommendations on how ships can be better maintained through the establishment of Maritime or Admiralty Court and the posting of a bond by the owner of a seized ship for its release pending the determination of the maritime proceedings in court as practice in the US

A TRANSLOG ANALYSIS OF INSURANCE ECONOMIES IN NIGERIA

Recapitalization process that has recently become an imperative process in the Nigerian Financial industry has implications for the survival of insurance sector, especially on their service delivery efficiency. This study therefore seeks to investigate the problem of inefficiency in the Nigerian Insurance market from the perspective of their cost structures. The study takes advantage of secondary data of financial reports of thirty randomly selected insurance firms which span over a period of ten years and applied transcendental logarithm model to evaluate their performance from the cost structures strategy. The results indicate that only large scale firms enjoy cost saving advantages. Twenty percent firms sampled belong to this category. The result suggests that premium income would contribute to insurance firm’s performance, only when a sound investment decisions are made.Transcedental Logarithm, Cost Structures, Insurance firms and Efficiency