Senate Moves to Expose banks involved in MMM Ponzi Scheme.

Senate Moves to Expose banks involved in MMM Ponzi Scheme.

The Senate has hired the services of an international expert on cyberspace and banking crimes to expose banks used for transactions involving a ponzi scheme known as Mavrodi Mondial Movement (MMM).

The vice chairman of the Senate committee on information and communication technology and cybercrime, Senator Foster Ogola, made the disclosure on Thursday, September 7 during an interactive session between the committee and key players in the financial sector, The Punch reports.
Ogola said following an invitation of the Senate, an international expert on cyberspace and banking crimes had arrived the country to expose all those involved in how MMM defrauded Nigerians.

He said: “We need to secure our cyberspace and financial sector against all forms of crimes or frauds as seen with the MMM operators who came, in collaboration with insiders, and expressly entered into the banking system, duped and bolted out.

“We have to stop anything that will defraud us, and the first step now is to expose all the banks involved in the MMM fraud.
“As a chartered fraud examiner, when the scam called MMM ponzi scheme came with its 30 per cent interest in 30 days early last year, I told people then that it was a fraud but many refused to listen and some of them later learnt their lessons in bitter ways.”

Senator Ogola said the Senate was planning to introduce a legislation that would make digital education compulsory in both primary and secondary schools.
Meanwhile, the Senate president, Dr Bukola Saraki has said the new legislations, Secured Transactions in Movable Assets Act and the Credit Reporting Act passed by the National Assembly in June and signed into law by then Acting President Yemi Osinbajo will support the growth of MSME’s in Nigeria.

The Senate president stated that this will be possible through increased bank lending and reduce bank exposure to loan defaults through pre-examination of credit worthiness for would be borrowers.

We gathered that under the law, potential borrowers can now register assets other than land and property as collateral to secure a loan from banks.

Securing financing through loans has long been a problem for Nigerian entrepreneurs in the past as most MSME owners rely on personal savings or loans from family and friends to launch their business ventures.

The new law, also known as the Collateral Registry Act, allows banks to increase lending to MSME’s, while not negatively impacting their balance sheets.