Remarks

Remarks by Deputy Chief of Mission, Matt Harington
Anti-Money Laundering Training for Customs Officials
G.F. Function Center
March 2, 2009

Good morning.  It is my pleasure to welcome you to Windhoek and this week’s workshop on Anti-money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing training for Namibian Customs and Excise Officials.  Throughout the world, nations are fighting against organized crime and terrorist networks that use money-laundering to capture their illegal profits and often to undermine governments.  I applaud Namibia for working with the United States and other international partners to put in place a strong anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism finance regime.

The training we will carry out this week will help to ensure that Namibia’s financial institutions and law enforcement agencies have the skills and tools to fight money laundering and terrorism financing.  It is part of an overall strategy that the Office of Technical Assistance, the U.S Treasury Department, and its Donor partners, such as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the World Bank, have for cultivating a systematic approach to fighting money laundering and terrorist financing here in Namibia and worldwide. 

Besides training, a key component to fighting money laundering and terrorist financing is the enactment of strong legislation which makes these crimes illegal and grants enforcement agencies to the tools to detect and prosecute them.  Very soon Namibia will implement its anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing legal regime by adopting the Financial Intelligence Act of 2007 and the Prevention of Organized Crime Act of 2004.  The Financial Intelligence Act will be the cornerstone of Namibia’s regime for Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism.  The Prevention of Organized Crime Act is also crucial in the fight against financial crime because it defines money laundering as a punishable offense and it contains critical provisions for confiscation and forfeiture of the proceeds of crime. After these two Acts enter into force, Namibia will move to enact its proposed Anti-Terrorism Bill and may then ratify the UN Convention against Terrorist Financing, which it signed in 2001.

This excellent Namibian legislation must be supported by a system that successfully detects and discourages money laundering and terrorist financing.  And this is the meat of this week’s training.  The components of such a system are well known to our trainers and their counterparts at the Bank of Namibia.  They include:

• Detecting and discouraging financial crime in the banks and other parts of the financial system through customer due diligence and suspicious transaction reporting to the Financial Intelligence Centre  at the Bank of Namibia;
• Analysis of suspicious transaction reports by the Financial Intelligence Centre;
• Investigation by NAMPOL, Customs, or the Anti-Corruption Commission; and
• Prosecution of appropriate cases by the Prosecutor General’s Office.

This week, our trainers will focus on Customs and its reporting of suspicious transactions and investigation of suspected money laundering (or even terrorist financing). 

This training is critical to detecting and deterring money laundering and terrorist financing.  All the different sectors of the financial system – the private banks, law enforcement, the Bank of Namibia, and others - must work together to ensure that there are no cracks in the system and that criminal activity does not slip through.

To that end the U.S. government and its partners have provided training during the past year to strengthen Namibia’s financial sector in the various aspects of the anti-money laundering regime, including: 

• Basic anti-money laundering training for the financial sector;
• Analysis of suspicious transaction reports for the Financial Intelligence Centre; 
• Investigative techniques for NAMPOL; and
• Preparing and prosecuting cases for the office of the Prosecutor General.

Namibia is a very peaceful country with wonderful vistas and beautiful landscapes.  But the threat of money laundering exists world-wide.  During the training for NAMPOL and the Office of the Prosecutor-General, last year, the participants identified many serious categories of serious financial crime here in Namibia that would be prone to money laundering.  We applaud the government of Namibia for its vigilance and its foresight in enacting the antimony laundering legislation, creating the Financial Intelligence Centre and treating money laundering and terrorism financing as the serious crimes that they are.

I want to thank the Office of Technical Assistance and the Financial Intelligence Centre, Bank of Namibia for planning and coordinating this week’s training.  I urge the participants to study hard for your efforts that here are an important part of the international initiative against financial crime and corruption.