All good things come to an end. And the AML-CFT ESCAY Project is no exception. After two very successful years, our project comes to an end this September.
We hit the ground running in October of 2022, building on the successes and milestones achieved through two preceding phases (AML-CFT in GHOA, 2015-2019 and AML-THB 2019-2022). And with this new project in 2022, we focused on targeting Illicit Financial Flows, generated by all forms of transnational organized crimes (TOC).
From the onset, we deliberately engaged an all-inclusive approach, bringing in all stakeholders of the criminal justice system. At our project launch workshops in Kenya and Mauritius, we brought together Heads of Financial Intelligence Units, Heads of Directorates of Criminal Investigations, Heads Immigration authorities, Heads of Asset Recovery Agencies, and the Directors of Public Prosecution of the thirty-three countries that were now within our mandate.
We started as we intended to continue, by applying a multi-agency approach to “follow the money,” targeting operational institutions and their practitioners. Each training envisaged and organized, was built on FATF recommendations and intermediate results: We brought together all the relevant actors in each country, responsible for combating illicit financial flows, mostly public officials from law enforcement agencies, prosecution, justice sector, immigration services, asset recovery, banking, and financial sector, among others.
The decision to involve and train practitioners was to ensure the sustainability of the project’s achievements. It was also to ensure that we delivered trainings and trainings of trainers to those who would transfer knowledge gained to their institutions, including to police and prosecution academies.
Despite various challenges, we are happy with the successes achieved over the last eight years, where from our base in Nairobi, we have worked throughout Eastern, Central and Southern Africa regions and Yemen.
Thanks to you all, we have achieved more than our initial projections! This is partly because we have adapted our programs to meet emerging needs, including but not limited to:
- The signing of Memoranda of Understanding between many partner states. During our trainings, countries signed bilateral MoUs, committing to work together, formally, and informally, to provide mutual legal assistance and information sharing. Many more bilateral agreements were made between regional institutions and between individual officers especially during our regional workshops.
- We spearheaded the development of Inter-agency Guidelines on the investigation and prosecution of Terrorism and terrorism related cases in Kenya and Tanzania. The two countries adopted and published the Guidelines handbooks for use by investigating and prosecution officers. This marked a crucial step towards harmonising style and approach of fighting organised crime across investigating and prosecution institutions.
- More recently, we supported the development of national Training curricula in financial investigations for five countries namely: Kenya; Uganda; Tanzania; Malawi and Zambia. With our assistance, each country developed a complete curriculum on financial investigations, adapted to suit their respective country’s gaps and needs. The finalised curricula were adapted and are at various stages of adoption for use in the respective countries’ institutions, including police and prosecution academies.
With many African countries having to comply with international standards and requirements for financial investigations related to organized crime, this development has been a vital tool to begin to fill this gap. The programs, fully funded by the training institutions and totally in line with FATF Action Plan recommendations, will ensure the sustainability of the gains made. The curricula are also available as a template for use by other countries in the region who have expressed interest in developing a national curriculum on financial investigations.
In the end, we now look back and reflect on our achievements to learn and to help us prepare for what is coming. This is a great moment of retrospection; not just for us as an entire project team, but also for our implementing authority, for our funders, our company of incredibly talented experts from various international organizations with whom we have worked.
Indeed, it is a significant moment for us to leave Nairobi after these eight intense and rich years. It is also a moment for us to consider what lies ahead. The closing of the door on the AML-CFT ESCAY project but also the opening a new, bigger door – SECFIN. Still under construction, EU-funded SECFIN is poised to be a much bigger project, covering all of Africa, and will collaborate with partner governments to tackle illicit financial flows in and out of the continent.
So here we are, at the doorstep of something much bigger and even better!
As of October, our office is moving to Pretoria, South Africa. Our team, representing CIVIPOL France, will majorly work with the countries of the Southern Africa region.
Yet, our achievements – and many technical assistance sessions, jointly provided in collaboration with ESAAMLG to many countries facing disagreements of the FATF Grey List – have laid an important cornerstone for the new project to come.
The new project will be larger, more complex and will offer the broadest possible portfolio in terms of technical assistance, high and low intensity training with a broad of demand-driven offerings. And indeed, it will also have a strong component targeting civil society. Nevertheless, several partner countries have already expressed great interest in us supporting them to replicate the development of the Guidelines, the drafting of national curricula and the training of trainers. Therefore, this is where we will start!
