NBFIRA AT FIA NATIONAL RISK ASSESMENT WORKSHOP

NBFIRA attended the Anti-Money Laundering workshop organized by Botswana Financial Intelligence Agency (FIA) and facilitated by Mr. Guiseppe Lombardo (International Strategic Advisor, Financial Integrity) and other representatives from the World Bank. FIA is a central agency for requesting, receiving, analyzing and disseminating information on financial disclosures relating to suspicious transactions, particularly money laundering and financing terrorism. The workshop aimed at assessing risks Botswana faces with regards to Money Laundering (ML) and Terrorism Financing (TF). This was achieved by defining money laundering, acts of financing terrorism, and proceeds of crime used by criminals to finance their illicit activities. The workshop identified risk increasing factors in Botswana which included but not limited to; - Not having measures to determine or identify money laundering activities. - Lack of policies in place to support investigations and prosecutions. - Non-identified mitigating tools that measures risks of money laundering. - Types of sanctions that regulators use. Below are identified illicit crimes that exist in Botswana being; - Fraud - Drug trafficking - Corruption - Smuggling - Poaching The National Risk Assessment workshop will benefit the Government, Financial Institutions and Private Business Authorities inidentifying existing and emerging ML/TF risks and how to prevent them. Money laundering is bad for Botswana because it significantly undermines economic development.