The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, has rated Rivers as the state with the second highest number of laundering cases in Nigeria.
Lagos beats Rivers to the top spot as the state with the highest number of money laundering cases.
The acting Chairman of the EFCC, Ibrahim Magu, disclosed these to reporters in Port-Harcourt during a one-day official visit to the state on Tuesday.
Magu vowed that the judgement stopping the Commission from investigating the state governors of economic crimes would soon be quashed.
The EFCC boss, who said the Commission will leave nothing upturned to track and expose every form of criminal activities in the country, also blamed the huge oil deposit nature of the state for the high level of economic and financial crimes cases in the place but noted that the agency will leave nothing undone to ensure that this ugly situation was reduced, if not eradicated.
He said: “I think Rivers State is the next to Lagos in terms of crime, this is the headquarter of money laundering, because there is a lot of oil money, bunker money here.
“I think you can rate Port Harcourt the second to maybe Lagos when you talk of people playing with sinking, diving, hiding, maybe because of the large space of oil deals.
“Nothing is going to stop us, even the issue of the court order allegedly obtained by Dr Peter Odili and co to stop the EFCC from investigation and prosecution has been overtaken by event even though the matter is still at the supreme we on it.
“I am telling you that, that judgement cannot stand, it will only take sometime it cannot hold and we are going to conclude the investigation.
“There are so many investigation we are doing, we will take it before the court, let the court refuse to prosecute their case. I am sure the matter has suffered for about 13 years now. We are going to test it, the matter is in the supreme Court, we will follow it up.
“That decision that is pending in the supreme Court does not actually, cannot hold water again. There are subsequent judgement that has discarded it. Clearly, there are other judgement that came up and said nobody, not even the judge, not even the Judiciary, not even the court can stop us from investigating and prosecuting.”
