NFIU Reports Terrorists Using Women's Bank Accounts to Move Illicit Funds Secretly
NFIU's 2025 Annual Report reveals terrorist financiers are opening bank accounts in women's names while male commanders secretly control them, exploiting cultural norms that make women less likely to be suspected by authorities. The Unit describes this as identity laundering, where men hold ATM cards, mobile-banking credentials and PINs while women often remain unaware of transactions.
The report also identifies disconnected phone registration as another method, with facilitators using pre-registered SIMs, SIMs from deceased persons, or gender-based proxies to break the link between phone numbers and actual beneficiaries. This severs the audit trail, making it difficult for investigators to trace transactions when flagged.
Additionally, terrorist cells like ISWAP use detailed transaction narrations and coded language in descriptions—switching languages and using innocuous words or alphanumeric strings—to evade automated keyword filters that flag terms like 'Jihad' or 'Arms'. NFIU documented a four-stage crowdfunding network where foreign facilitators pose as humanitarian relief, collecting small donations ($50–$500) unlikely to trigger AML alerts, before consolidating funds and transferring through money-transfer operators to Nigerian money mules (students, small-business owners, relatives) who may convert funds to cash or purchase dual-use items.
These sophisticated evasion tactics highlight gaps in current monitoring systems that rely on BVN-SIM links and standard transaction screening. How should individuals and businesses strengthen their own financial vigilance beyond relying solely on bank security to detect such sophisticated illicit networks?