10 Feb 2019

Money laundering and financing of terrorism are thorny issues among governments across the globe, Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Mr Kenneth Matambo, has said.

Mr Matambo was responding to a question during a media briefing recently about Botswana’s listing as a high risk country for money laundering by the Financial Action Task Force, a policy making body that sets standards and promotes effective implementation of legal, regulatory and operational measures for combating money laundering, terrorism financing and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system.

As part of the global community, the minister said “we were assessed as Botswana to be having some weaknesses and these weaknesses were in terms of the laws that are available to prevent money laundering and so forth.”

Therefore, to prevent issues of money laundering and financing of terrorism, he said in 2018  about 20 pieces of legislation were presented to Parliament in order to strengthen the country’s legal framework.

That, he said, was done such that Botswana could be seen to be capable of avoiding, if not closing altogether, chances of money laundering and financing of terrorism.

“We have done that and we have been congratulated for that we have been able to achieve, at least putting in place the legal framework,” he added.

Since the laws have just been introduced, Minister Matambo said there was need to develop capacity internally to ensure they were effective, adding that as a country, Botswana, would be assessed and monitored for issues of money laundering and financing of terrorism like other countries.

“So, we have agreed with the authorities that assess us, whether we are ready, effective or not, to implement certain actions by the banks, government or all players who are there dealing with financial transactions in this country,” said Mr Matambo.

Each one of the players, the minister said, had something to do, as agreed “and I believe that within the next six or eight months we should have been able to conclude everything and then we can be removed from that list.”

“It’s not a secret, I don’t think we have a crisis, but still we must do all those things so that there is nobody who doubts the capacity of Botswana to be able to deal with money laundering and the financing of terrorism and we are on it,” he added. ENDS