The director of the Rwanda National Police (RNP) Financial Investigations Unit (FIU), Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Joseph Costa Habyara, said that cross-border cooperation and joining international groupings in particular are inevitable factors to effectively deal with the evolving nature of money laundering and terrorism financing.
In an interview, ACP Habyara said that the Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group (ESAAMLG), to which Rwanda and FIU in particular officially joined in September 2014, has been vital in terms of skills development and common understand on the nature of the problem, and joint response.
Created in 2011, FIU is a central or national reporting centre responsible for collecting, analyzing, disseminating, investigating and combating money laundering and financing terrorism, with its headquarters in the National Bank of Rwanda.
“As a new unit but dealing with sophisticated crimes of money laundering and terrorism financing, which are largely conducted online with the use of technology, it is paramount to understand how it is carried out, how other affected countries were able to deal with them and the required skills in detecting such crimes, and these are the things we have been able to acquire from such cross-border cooperation,” ACP Habyara said.
“You can’t deal with such globalised challenges in isolation; we have to work together as FIUs or nations, create active networks which make sharing of information easier,” he added.
The Eastern And South African Anti Money Laundering Group was established in August 1999 in Arusha, Tanzania to combat money laundering and financing terrorism by implementing the Financial Action task Force (FATF) recommendations.
It focuses on cooperation with other international organizations concerned with combating money laundering and terrorist financing as well as studying and researching regional typologies and coordinating technical assistance.
Currently, ESAAMLG is composed of 16 member countries; Angola, Botswana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
The FATF with its headquarters in Paris, France, on the other hand, is intergovernmental body whose purpose is to develop and promote an international response to combat money laundering and financing terrorism.
Some of the FATF 40 recommendations include states establishing FIUs, enacting laws to fight the two crimes.
“We are now in the advanced stage of putting the legal procedures in place as required by FATF, and will be finalized soon,” said ACP Habyara.
“Money laundering and financing terrorism are crimes coordinated across national borders, involving groups or networks of individuals working in more than one country to plan and execute illegal business ventures; these are incidents that have economic consequences by diverting foreign direct investment and doing business hindering the financial soundness of the financial sector, and no doubt, such international grouping play a significant part to combat them.”
“The good news is that we have not experienced any case of money laundering and terrorism financing in Rwanda. Even the suspicious financial transactions we had stopped over the years, we found no connection.”
FIU had stopped suspicious bank transactions equivalent to US210, 000 dollars in 2012, US160, 000 dollars in 2014 and 22 bank accounts were frozen in 2015, were okayed after investigations found no connection to money laundering or terrorism financing.
Meanwhile, ACP Habyara said that they intend to also join Egmont Group, an international forum of FIUs with its headquarters in Toronto, Canada, that promotes the development of FIUs in terms of training, information exchange and sharing of expertise around the world.
“Fighting money laundering, terrorism financing as well as terrorism can only be achieved by regional and international cooperation. Thus, regional and international bodies are crucial to prevent the scourge.”
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