20 Oct 2020

The Ministry of Finance and Economic Development launched a series of online training modules organised to sensitise key stakeholders on Anti-Money Laundering/Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT).

Speaking during the launch Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, deputy permanent secretary, finance administration and project coordinator Ms Ellen Richard-Madisa said the week-long the technical assistance training by European Union (EU) was to capacitate Botswana to address deficiencies in the country’s AML/CFT framework.

Officially opening the training, Ambassador Jan Sadek, EU Head of Delegation to Botswana and SADC said the training was a critical task in fighting against money laundering and other organised crimes.

“With the raising concerns about money laundering and the increase of terrorist attacks, the EU recently decided to improve its framework to fight against money laundering and terrorist financing. 

This framework applies firstly to the EU member states themselves but the EU has also taken upon itself to have a role in the fight globally,” he said.

Mr Sadek highlighted that the EU as part of Financial Action Task Force (FATF) had aligned its framework on the FATF assessment.

He added that EU was working closely together with  other FAFT partners all over the world.

In Botswana and over the past two years, the EU had supported all efforts made by the government to address the deficiencies that had been identified, he said.

Mr Sadek thanked government for its constructive approach and for sharing their vision of combating money laundering globally.

“I want to highlight that the government has shown strong political will and have given the appropriate level of importance to addressing the deficiencies in accordance with its action plan and this is confirmed in the successive progress reports released by the FATF since October 2018,” he noted.

This, he said was an area out of many, where Botswana stood out in the way the country tackled international challenges, adding the EU was impressed to have Botswana as an allied on the multilateral arena, in the United Nations and elsewhere, ‘like here on Anti-Money Laundering.’ 

The training covered topics such as countering the financing of terrorism and the FATF standards with trainees.

Non Profit Organisations (NPOs) were said to be prone to high chances of attracting terrorism financing as mostly insiders may direct resources towards a terrorist group, subverting the intentions of the donors and the NPO’s senior management.  ENDS