Anti-money laundering requires holistic approach

As a means of dousing the complex criminal activities of money launderers and terrorist financiers in the sub-region, Dr. Buno Nduka, Head of Programmes Division of the Inter-governmental Action Group Against Money Laundering in West Africa (GIABA) said it requires a holistic approach by all stakeholders to understand their roles in the fight against the canker.

It is for this reason that a four-day regional workshop on Anti-money Laundering/Combating Financing of Terrorist (AML/CFT) compliance supervision for Anglophone ECOWAS financial supervisors has been organised in collaboration with the World Bank.

Participating countries in the ongoing workshop include Ghana, Nigeria, The Gambia, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

“The vulnerability of our region is not in doubt and the risks and threats of ML and TF are on the increase. The search light is on our region as evidenced by recent events in the region”, he said.

The workshop, which started Monday in Accra, is designed to assist participants to fully understand the compliance supervisory framework of AML/CFT.

As stakeholders in the fight against this phenomenon, Dr. Nduka urged members to be alert at all times to frustrate every effort of the perpetrators, lamenting however that even “as you attempt to catch them, they devise new means of circumventing the system”.

GIABA was established in 2000 by the authority of Heads of States and government of the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) to ensure the adoption of standards against money laundering and the financing of terrorism in accordance with acceptable international standards and practices including the FATF 40+9 recommendations.

Its other mandates are to facilitate the adoption and implementation by member states, of measures against ML and FT, considering specific regional peculiarities and conditions, organise self-evaluations and mutual evaluations to determine the efficacy of measures adopted and so on.

World Bank Representative, Manlyn Pereira Gonvalves lauded the participating countries, noting that their participation signified a strong will that government agencies were committed to contributing to the global fight against money laundering and terrorism financing.

Touching on financial institutions which fall prey to these activities, she said there was the need to ensure that banking supervisors had the skills and the capacity to monitor banks' compliance with AML/CFT requirements for an efficient regime.

“Both on-site and off-site supervisions are necessary to cover the entire banking industry on an ongoing basis as well as to perform in-depth verifications where necessary.

Supervision needs to take into account, risks faced by banks as well as their ability to identify and mitigate them”, Madam Gonvalves advised.

At the end of the workshop, she believed that participants would develop a clear vision of the measures to be taken by the various countries to improve AML/CFT supervision domestically while the knowledge acquired is disseminated to others who did not get the opportunity to attend.

Madam Gonvalves further noted that such a move would gear up national efforts in building a strong supervisory regime.

Credit: Nathaniel Y. Yankson/nayank80.blogspot.com