CAC threatens to delist 100,000 companies from register

From Mustapha Adamu, Kano

The Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) has threatened to delist 100,000 inactive companies from its register for failure to comply with the commission’s obligations.

The Commission’s Registrar General, Garba Abubakar stated this while addressing members of civil societies, media, security agencies among others on the use of the Beneficial Ownership Register (BOR), in Kano state.

Abubakar said names of the companies would be published on the Commission’s website and given four weeks ultimatum to comply, and failure to do so, they will be struck off from its register.

According to him, “The law is clear, any company that has not been filing its returns or obligations, that is considered inactive or not in operations, that company is liable to be struck off if they continue doing that for 10 years.

“So, we have compiled the first list of 100,000 companies and they will be published on our website before the end of this week. They will be given four weeks within which to comply with which failure to comply their companies will be struck off from the register.

“Any company that is struck off will forfeit their properties to the government. But they are at liberty to apply and to be relisted in the register. If they are not relisted in the next 10 years, whatever assets they have will be forfeited to the government,” he said.

The Registrar further warned that provision of incorrect information at the point of registration also attracts a two years jail term.

“We all know that corruption and other illicit financial flows are carried out using corporate bodies as vehicles. There is a limit to transactions an individual can carry out, so most procurements and mining leases are issued or done using companies.

“The register provides information about the true owners and natural persons that control the companies, so it makes it easier for investigation agencies to search and know the true owners.

“So, if the company fails to provide the correct information about the ultimate individual that controls that company at the point of registration, that is criminal and attracts a two-year jail term. If they delay in providing the information attracts a daily default penalty minimum of N10,000 per day.

“The whole essence is you have a whole register that supports anti corruption, media and other which will aid them in investigation of corruption and money laundering.

“The register is designed and implemented in line with international commitment, with the commitment made by the Nigeria government to have an open central register of beneficial owners of companies, in line with the principles of financial action task force, open government partnership and extractive industry transparency initiative,” the CAC Registrar stressed.