Africa-Press – Ghana. Accra, Feb. 19, GNA – Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, Minister of Finance, has called on member States within the West African sub-region to strengthen collaboration in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing.
“With the West African Sub-region currently being a major region of concern regarding terrorist financing and its activities, there is the need to strengthen collaboration among member States in order to curb this menace with all its associated predicate offences,” he said.
Mr Ofori-Atta said this at the opening of the Intergovernmental Action Group against Money Laundering in West Africa (GIABA)’s 36th Technical Commission Plenary and 24th Ministerial Committee meeting in Accra.
GIABA is an institution of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) responsible for facilitating the adoption and implementation of Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Financing of Terrorism in West Africa.
The GIABA Plenary is an assembly of representatives of member States, development partners and observers in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing.
The assembly meets twice every year to share experiences with respect to challenges in implementing effective anti-money laundering and counter financing of terrorism measures.
The Finance Minister said they needed to adopt innovative and collective preventive measures to mitigate the growing risks and build resilience and prevent the next security and humanitarian disaster. He also asked them to identify sources of funds for terrorist groups, freeze them and use every legal means to ensure they never had access to funds.
Mr Ofori-Atta said the phenomenon was underpinned by several factors, including the presence of large, informal, cash-based economies, weak and porous borders, political instability, ethnic and communal violence, corruption, poverty and unemployment.
He said tackling those issues would enable the States to provide the requisite developmental needs to their people. “With the amount of illicit financial outflows, the region records, these resources, if recovered or retained, would facilitate socio-economic development,” the Finance Minister stated.
Mr Justice Kimelabalou Aba, Director-General of GIABA, said the main objective of GIABA was to conduct mutual evaluation reports of ECOWAS member States to identify challenges they faced in their fight against anti-money laundering.
He indicated that, so far, they had conducted nine mutual evaluations of different member States, including Ghana, saying, their assessment revealed that there were challenges with the effectiveness of laws and regulations.
“It is important to redouble efforts so that the recommendations formulated in the mutual evaluations reports in the light of the deficiencies identified are fully implemented in order to strengthen the anti-money laundering and counter-financing of terrorism systems and enable operational actors to be more effective in their assignments,” he said.
A key feature of the meeting is the consideration and approval of follow-up reports of the mutual evaluation of member States’ level of compliance with the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) 40 recommendations on anti-money laundering and counter-financing of terrorism.
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