Senate committee vows to expose banks used for MMM

The Senate Committee on Information Communication Technology (ICT) and Cybercrime has vowed to expose commercial banks used to perpetuate the fraud by the Mavro Mondial Movement (MMM) scheme which collapsed recently, robbing participants of a yet-to-be determined amount of money.

The committee’s Vice Chairman, Senator Foster Ogolo while speaking at a meeting with some stakeholders in the financial sector including the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), said the banks would be sanctioned.

He disclosed that an international expert specialising at revealing cyberspace and banking crimes was already in Nigeria at the invitation of the committee over the matter.

This, he said, was necessary to ensure that banking platforms are not used for such fraud in the future.

“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 collaborations with insiders, expressly entered into the banking system, duped and bolted out.

“We have to stop anything meant to defraud us from getting or hacking into our digital system and the first step now, is to first expose all the banks involved in the MMM fraud.

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“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,” Ogolo lamented.

The senator also disclosed that the Senate is working on legislation that would make digital education compulsory in primary and secondary schools.

Stakeholders at the session agreed on the need for the urgent creation of centralised data base anchored on the National Identity Card to arrest hacking and cybercrime in the economic sector.