Africa-Press – Mauritius. An apex body to oversee or coordinate the different agencies involved in investigating or preventing financial crimes, has again been mentioned by the Financial Services and Good Governance minister, Mahen Seeruttun, at an MSM party press conference on 5 August.
We are informed that a Financial Commission (FCC) bill has been finalised and will be tabled in Parliament in October. This comes following the earlier announcement by Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth at a forum organised by the ICAC, Bank of Mauritius and Mauritius Bankers Association, last December, about work in progress on an appropriate legislation for the FCC.
A similar announcement was made by Sir Anerood Jugnauth on 7 June 2016 in reply to a PQ pertaining to the proposed setting up of such an institution. Much earlier, there were rumours afoot around 2013 about a proposed merger of the Bank of Mauritius and the Financial Services Commission, presumably with a view to curtailing the recurrence of the kind of loopholes that transpired and were exploited by some unscrupulous scam operators which made the headlines then.
The purpose of the FCC would be to ensure greater coordination among law enforcement agencies and to reinforce public-private partnership in combating financial crime.
We have currently six separate agencies involved in tracking financial crime, namely the ICAC, the Financial Intelligence Unit, the Mauritius Revenue Authority, the Financial Services Commission, the Integrity Reporting Services Agency, the Gambling Regulatory Authority, without mentioning the role of the CCID or the Police in investigating financial fraud.
Whether the proposed umbrella institution will bring greater coordination among the law enforcement agencies, reporting to different parent ministries, remains to be seen.
There have been grumblings in the past arising from competing agendas, limited communication and information-sharing, mistrust as well as capacity differences between the different agencies at work in the fight against financial crime.
There already exists a problem of mistrust between ICAC and the Integrity Reporting Services Agency, which took the unusual route of dragging another State institution – the ICAC – to court for allegedly failing to fulfil its statutory obligations, as prescribed by law, to submit detailed reports instead of summary notes on suspected cases of unexplained wealth.
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