This week, we are in Pretoria, South Africa🇿🇦, at the invitation of South Africa’s Financial Intelligence Centre, for a week-long national training on investigation and prosecution of complex Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing offences.
The background of our presence here this week is to support South Africa’s efforts to exit from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF)‘s grey-list, which took effect in February last year. The FATF placed South Africa under increased monitoring for its strategic deficiencies in complying with international standards and requirements.
By mid this year, South Africa had largely addressed a good number of the action items within the specified deadlines and is expected to implement the remaining action items within the agreed time-frame before mid-next year, to exit the Grey List.
South Africa’s Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) requested support from EU-funded AML CFT ESCAY Project to organise some trainings. In line with this, and after consultations with the FIC, the EU Delegation to South Africa, and with Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group (ESAAMLG), we organised a national training on investigation and prosecution of complex Money laundering and terrorist financing offences.
This training is hands-on, practice oriented and designed in line with FATF action plan, to ensure South Africa’s “sustained increase in investigations and prosecutions of serious and complex money laundering and the full range of TF activities”.
We opened this training workshop in Pretoria on Monday. We were privileged to have Ms Julia Tloubatla, the Acting Senior Operations Manager at South Africa’s FIC and Mr Jyrki Tomi, the head of governance, infrastructure and the green Section at the EU Delegation to South Africa.
Leading the AML CFT ESCAY Project team in Pretoria is our team leader Frederic Bayard and senior technical advisor, Tuemay Aregawi. We are also joined by very experienced trainers from the esaamlg org including Muluken Yirga Dubale and Phineas Rameshovo MOLOTO; as well as experienced analysts, investigators and prosecutors from the Republic including Willem Venter, Tazi Nemaorani Nemaorani, Coleen Brown, luckson mgiba and Tshepang Moagi.
Participating institutions include various units from the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC), Directorate for Priority Crimes Investigation (DPCI) of South Africa Police Service (SAPS), National Prosecution Authority (NPA), the Investigative Directorate Against Corruption (IDAC) the Special Investigation Unit (SIU), the Asset Forfeiture Unit (AFU) of the NPA, South African Revenue Service (SARS) among others.
Our objective is to strengthen and equip South Africa’s key stakeholders with necessary knowledge, skills, and tools on effective investigation and prosecution of ML/TF offences.
#training #europeanunion #southafrica #moneylaundering #investigations #followthemoney CIVIPOL
