EFCC, Money Laundering regulation and Politically Exposed Persons: Evidential burden and the cobweb of legalism

This dissertation compares the use and effect of money laundering regulation and sanction in some African and Western jurisdictions - arguing that excessive use of criminal jurisdiction in this area of the law, in respect to African Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs), is misplaced. The author suggests that a criminal sanction and the opprobrium attached to it, in respect to political figures, does not have the same resonance in Africa as it does in Western jurisdictions. As a result, the rush for criminal indictment of officials by many AML agencies in Africa, regardless of the implausibility of the evidence masks a fundamental divergence of values in the way a criminal indictment is conceptualised across different jurisdictions.