Africa-Press – Mauritius. The Regional Centre of Excellence (RCE) of the Financial Services Commission (FSC) in collaboration with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) organised, this afternoon, a virtual workshop on “Supporting efforts to tackle Corruption and other Financial Crimes during COVID-19”, at Nex Tower in Ebene.
Several personalities, namely, the Chief Executive (CE) of the FSC, Mr Dhanesswurnath Thakoor; the Director General (DG) of the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), Dr Navin Beekarry; and the Head of the Anti-Corruption Division (ACD), Directorate for Financial and Enterprise Affairs, OECD, Mr.
Patrick Moulette, were the key spokespersons. In his address, Mr Thakoor highlighted that there were 560 participants from 22 different countries who have registered for this workshop and commended the OECD and the RCE for the theme of today’s event which comes at this opportune moment where the world is hopefully getting out of the pandemic.
According to him, statistics have shown that corruption and financial crimes have significantly picked up during the COVID-19 pandemic, whereby scammers have taken advantage of the vulnerabilities of systems.
Moreover, the CE emphasised that as the regulator of the non-bank financial services sector, the Commission takes ongoing measures to combat financial crime and collaborate with other authorities in the fight against corruption.
On this note, he pointed out that since the advent of the pandemic in 2020, it has been observed that scammers have engaged into different kinds of scam activities including: Luring the public to offer seemingly enticing loan packages; Exploiting weaknesses in Information Technology networks and systems to gain access to confidential, personal and business-critical information amid a sharp rise in remote-working; Fundraising for fake charities and various COVID-19 related phishing schemes; and increasing presence in Social Media, through Social Engineering, to better orchestrate phishing attempts.
As for Dr Beekarry, he remarked that it is most unfortunate that corruption has come to the surface again in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. He highlighted the importance of co-operation and co-ordination between national, regional and international stakeholders to support national reforms and tackle corruption, foreign bribery and other related financial crimes.
He also spoke of how financial crimes and money laundering are highly correlated and added that the concerned institutions have, in this context, demonstrated to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) that the systems that implemented to combat money laundering and financing of terrorism are sustainable.
For his part, Mr Moulette recalled that this workshop is one of a series of workshop organised in Mauritius by RCE in collaboration with the OECD. This initiative, he underlined, is the result of a Memorandum of Understanding which was signed between the Government of Mauritius and the OECD in September 2018.
Speaking of the objective of the workshop, Mr Moulette indicated that it focused on combating corruption and strengthening integrity measures as well as approaches to preventing, detecting, investigating and prosecuting corruption and financial crimes during COVID-19.
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