This year marks the beginning of the end of the AML-CFT ESCAY Project. Indeed, this was designed from the beginning as a bridging project, short-term but with very specific objectives which would lay the foundation for a continent-wide programme, that would work throughout Africa to curb Illicit Financial Flows, IFFs.
And in this sense, we are right on course! We are getting ready to wind up this project, and we’re only implementing activities that were in our work plan since last year. At the same time, we are gearing up for the new project, lining up priority needs and requests from partner States which will be implemented in the next phase of the project.
The achievements we have realized over the last 18 months will indeed become the foundation blocks of the new project. To us, our foremost achievement is the relationships we have built over the years (in the 34 countries we cover) with institutions and organisations charged with curbing illicit financial flows. We have become a family. We talk and we listen to each other. And as a family, we will work together in the next phase to achieve even greater success.
As much as possible, the next phase will be demand-driven, offering only much needed support to partner countries. This is the skeleton design of the new phase, but its intricate system of how everything will work is still ‘under construction’. In due time, and in our next issue of our final project newsletter (to be published in July) we will share with you the full picture of the what, the how, the when and the why of the new project.
In the meantime, we are happy to report that we have had very fruitful activities and engagements already since January this year. We started off in Zambia to witness the signing and launch ceremony of the National Curriculum of Financial Investigations and Asset Recovery for Law Enforcement Agencies, whose development we supported from start to finish. You will recall that Zambia was one of 4 countries we supported last year to receive training on curriculum development. The four Countries, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi and of course Zambia, developed their curriculum over 4 months, with the guidance of an international group of experts.
One of the experts, Neil Bennet, writes elsewhere in this newsletter about the process, the highlights, the challenges and the lessons learnt from and by the 4 countries during their development of Curricula on Financial Investigations.
In February, we resumed our training activities with a first session for Kenya’s judges and magistrates on Counter Terrorism and Counter financing of terrorism. This training, as in previous years, was jointly organized in collaboration with the US Department of Justice and with the Kenya Judiciary Academy, KJA.
In this last quarter, we have also had several key bilateral meetings; first with the Swedish Tax Agency representatives who paid us a courtesy call at our offices in Nairobi. We also met with representatives of FIIAP, the Spanish and European systems of cooperation and external action, that specializes in the promotion of public policies by promoting knowledge exchange between institutions in different countries. Both the Swedish Tax Agency and FIIAP will be part of the upcoming new project I mentioned earlier. During our separate meetings, we discussed possible points of collaboration in the next project phase and ways to avoid duplication of effort.
Finally, we would also love to hear from you! Tell us how you or your institution have benefitted from any of our activities and how you hope our next phase could benefit you or your institution and country. Write to our communications manager and to our M&E officer at these addresses: bkangongoi@amlcft-escay.eu and black.m@civipol.fr
Enjoy the read!
Fred
