Events

Guest Speakers: Joy Malala, Warwick Law School and Nkechikwu Azinge-Egbiri, Lancaster University

Title: 'The Politics of FATF Compliance: Lessons from Nigeria'

Abstract: Drawing on our ESRC IAA project titled, “Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Greylisting: Lessons from Nigeria’ and ongoing research, we discuss the politics of FATF compliance. FATF, as a powerful standard setting body, exerts considerable transnational pressure on developing states through its greylisting mechanism shaping domestic legal and institutional priorities. Nigeria’s compliance is linked to its reputation management, access to global financial markets, foreign investments and development finance all which demand FATF compliance. Our findings reveal that compliance with FATF standards is predominantly strategic, creative and often performative oriented towards signalling credibility rather than addressing entrenched governance challenges. This significantly generates enforcement challenges including fragmented inter-agency arrangements often characterised by low trust and uneven capacity, selective enforcement which often disproportionately targets informal and low-level actors whilst entrenching limited accountability for powerful interests leaving significant capacity deficits across compliance agencies. Exiting the greylist is therefore understood as symbolic, as it generates a legitimacy feedback loop that temporarily restores market confidence while maintaining structural weaknesses.