The Corporate Affairs Commission, CAC has threatened to delist 100,000 inactive companies from it register for failure to comply with the commission's obligation.
The Commission's Registrar General, Garba Abubakar stated this while addressing members of civil society, media, security agencies among others on the use of Beneficial Ownership Register, BOR in Kano.
Abubakar said names of the companies will be published on the Commission's website and given four weeks ultimatum to comply upon which failure to do so they will be struck off from it register.
According to him, "The law is clear, any company that has not being filing it 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 giving four weeks within which to comply of 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 forefeited to the government," he said.
The Registrar further warned that provision of incorrect information at the point of registration also attracts two years jail term.
"We all know that corruption and other illicit financial flaws are carried out using corporate bodies as vehicles. There is a limit to transaction 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 person that controls 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 two year jail term. If they delay in providing the information attracts daily default penalty minimum of N10,000 per day.
"So the whole essence is you have a whole register that support of anticorruption, media and other which will aid them in investigation of corruption and money laundering.
"The register is design 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 taskforce, open government partnership and extractive industry transparency initiative," the Registrar, Garba Abubakar however stated.
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