With support from the European Commission, we were excited in July to kick off a tailor-made technical assistance training workshop for Namibia’s relevant officials in charge of financial intelligence analysis, investigations and prosecution of money laundering and terrorist financing as well as tracing and recovery of proceeds of crime.
The backdrop for this training workshop was the grey listing of Namibia by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in February this year.
This training workshop was organised in collaboration with Namibia’s Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC).
At the official opening ceremony, we were privileged to have H E Ana-Beatriz Martins, the EU Ambassador to Namibia and Mr Bryan (KGB) Eiseb, the Director of Namibia’s Financial Intelligence Centre.
In her opening remarks, H E Ana-Beatriz Martins said, ‘The EU is increasingly present alongside its partners in Africa, to contribute to the stability of states and to allow for informed, effective, and sound financial systems. We are therefore delighted to be here this morning, to offer our support to Namibia, not only to exit the grey list, which is a priority for us all, but to also strengthen her framework in fighting illicit financial flows, money laundering and forms of organised crime’.
Representing the Namibian authorities, Mr Bryan (KGB) Eiseb said, ‘We must consolidate our efforts amongst state agencies, the private sector and international partners to disrupt financial crime. We must use all tools available in our criminal justice arsenal to identify proceeds of financial crimes and intervene on these proceeds so that we demonstrate that Crime does not pay’
This workshop drew participants from the Bank of Namibia, the Namibia Police Force, Namibia’s Anti Corruption Commission, Namibia Central Intelligence service, Office of the Prosecutor General, Namibia Financial Institutions Supervisory Authority, the Financial Intelligence Centre and the Namibia Revenue Agency.
The training team sought to assist Namibia to comply with international standards in Anti-Money laundering, Counter the Financing of Terrorism and Counter Proliferation Financing.
Leading the AML CFT ESCAY Project team in Namibia was our team leader Frédéric BAYARD and our senior Technical advisor Tuemay Aregawi Desta. We were grateful to partner again in this training with Muluken Yirga Dubale and Phineas Rameshovo MOLOTO, both of the East and southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group, ESAAMLG
The week’s engagement was expected to build the capacity of the attending officials, to enable Namibia to sufficiently implement the necessary actions identified in the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) action plan and to enhance Namibia’s compliance with the relevant international and FATF Standards and thereby exit from the grey list within the shortest time possible.
