$160m Remittances: Nigerians Treated Harshly for Ineffective Anti-Money Laundering Policy, Says Ping Express

Promoters of Ping Express have debunked allegations that the company or its past directors were involved in money laundering or fraud.

This follows the recent 27 months jail term slammed on the founders of the Texas-based fintech firm – Anslem Oshionebo and Opeyemi Odeyale – for allegedly failing to combat money laundering on the their platform during financial remittances to Nigeria.

In a statement by Ping Express, which was released by Global Marketing Communications Professional, the agency managing the fintech’s public relation, it stated that in the last two and a half years, the company had been dragged through the US court system on unsubstantiated allegations, including money laundering.

According to the statement, “We deny any allegations that we participated in money laundering activities via our platform; and the court records are available and very clear.

“It is deeply saddening that a technology that was designed to help immigrants stay connected to their families could have been grossly misused by a few of the platform’s over 80 thousand customers.

“The company did not steal from anyone and did not know or conspire with anyone to steal a dollar from anyone. The court documents and rulings are clear. No losses and no restitution were imposed on the company nor its founders and this validates that the US court recognised that no fraud was perpetrated within the company’s platform nor was fraud aided or abetted by its founders,” the statement added.

According to the statement, Ping Express served more than 80,000 hardworking and honest Nigerians in the US and more in other parts of the world.

Ping Express operated in more than 28 countries including UK, Canada and several European countries and served immigrants from 27 African countries with consistent Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) that were reviewed and approved by regulators.

“It is of importance to note that some of the Ping’s users that were queried by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) were customers of the top two competition.

“These users paid Ping directly from their personal bank accounts in the US. All its customers were verified and went through extensive screening before their transactions were processed.

“Internal limits, which were subject to review per the Company’s policy, are the basis for which we were non-compliant. In essence, customers have no hard limits per the Company’s policies (not external limits).

“Ping operated strict compliance standards, and ensured users paid from their personal bank accounts. Unfortunately, the US government insisted that Ping didn’t consider and file enough suspicious reports on all its customers despite them paying from their personal bank accounts with monies already housed by American banks who in the dynamics that Ping know are the ones responsible for the flagging of the source of the monies in their customers’ accounts.”

“It was apparently expected that its owners would know every single Nigerian by name, creed, behavior and track record, as amusing as this sounds, it’s concerning and a pointer to many other things that has crystallized in this matter.

“It is depressing to view the malicious and baseless claims being reported in the Nigerian media.

“This becomes a sample case for us all to find company founders being held liable for internal control failures of their company, especially when they had no personal relationship with its users.

“However, this is what the Ping former owners are faced with,” it added.

One of the founders, Oshionebo was quoted to have said: “We focused on making the simple task of helping a family much easier. We worked very hard with integrity to develop a system that disrupted the marketplace. “Rather than join other companies in creating customer service and relations team outside Nigeria, we were passionate about Nigeria and built one of the first outsourcing unit in Nigeria, employing over 40 Nigerians. History is the best judge.”

Also, the Co-founder and former COO, Odeyale, said: “Having led an extremely expensive and painful legal battle with the US regulators over the last 3 years, with the full support of my wife, it was simply time to make decision that was only in the best interest of my family.

“I stand proud of what we have achieved for the Nigerian and African community in US and other part of the world.”

Emma Okonji

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