The International Criminal Police Organisation has provided the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission with an application that would enhance intelligence-sharing in the tracking of organized crime, such as money laundering and terrorism financing.

The application comprised a database to be supervised by the National Central Bureau, an interface between Interpol and national law enforcement agencies of countries through an i24/7 Gemini Project global communications system.

The acting EFCC spokesman, Tony Orilade, explained in a statement in Abuja on Tuesday, that the application would be managed by the Commission’s Information and Communications Technology Department.

It said that the acting Chairman of the Commission, Ibrahim Magu witnessed the demonstration of the new application at the Commission’s Abuja headquarters on Monday.

The Interpol Project Officer, Noha Amer, who led a delegation of the global police to the Commission disclosed that the United States was funding the project in Nigeria, Niger, Mali and Libya, as part of measures aimed at detecting and interdicting stolen and illicit funds by organised criminals.

She explained that the project would involve training of EFCC operatives on various programmes including Interpol policing capabilities and standard operations.

The training, she added, would commence after the installation of the NCB database.

Interpol’s Project Officer II, Christophe Nakobyan, also explained that the i247 platform as a closed group for law enforcement agencies was a safer form of connectivity than Yahoo and Whatsapp, noting that it provides access to information sharing, with an optimal level of security.

While noting the dangers law enforcement agencies face from hackers, he disclosed that “we have 10,000 attacks by hackers per day but at the moment it is very safe as no hacker has been successful.”

According to him, the Interpol receives over five billion requests in a year in the database for information.