'Conduct background check before you donate to the needy or NGO; they can be scammers, terrorism financiers' — FIC warns

Seth Nana Amoako, Head of Compliance Unit at the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC), has urged Ghanaians to be wary of who they give financial assistance.

He said some organisations may be scammers or terrorism financiers.

The anti-terrorism financing activists, delivering a presentation at the end of a 2-day program organized by the FIC on Money Laundering (ML) and Terrorism Financing (TF), indicated that terrorists can sometimes disguise themselves as poor or needy persons.

He added that they can operate an Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) to solicit funds from the unsuspecting public to enable them fund their criminal agenda.

Mr Amoako said he has personally encountered different people begging for alms to solve some urgent issue.

According to him, he surprisingly sees the same people sometimes a year later with the same excuse still extorting monies from the unsuspecting public.

To Nana Ankomah, such persons may be scammers or terrorists who uses one of those cunning ways to raise funds to aid their criminal activities.

“For years, I have always seen the same people who present themselves as if they may die in the next hours if no help is given to them, and for the sake of Christianity, we help them.

"Meanwhile, I still see those same people in a different place sometimes a year after with that same message, and I ask myself: Are they not the people who were dying a year ago?" he quizzes.

He further cautions businessmen, especially car dealers and those into real estate to sometimes probe their customers about their sources of wealth to help prevent money laundering in the country.

“Businessmen like car dealers, real estate dealers, and others should check the sources of their customers’ funding before they engage in transactions with them,” he stated.

The FIC serves as the National Center for the receipt and analysis of suspicious transaction reports and other information relevant to the predicate crimes of money laundering, terrorism financing, and proliferation financing (ML/TF & P), as well as the dissemination of actionable intelligence to competent authorities.