On Thursday, February 17, 2022, opened its 36th Technical Commission (TC)/Plenary and its 24th Ministerial Committee (GMC) meeting bringing together experts, specialists, and various stakeholders well abreast with Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Counter Terrorism Financing (CFT) regimes at the Movenpick Ambassador Hotel, Accra, Ghana.
The GIABA Plenary is a gathering of specialists, including delegates of Member States (MS), improvement accomplices, and spectators in the battle against illegal tax avoidance (ML) and psychological oppressor financing (TF), who meet two times yearly to impart their encounters to regard to the difficulties they face in carrying out viable Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Counter Financing of Terrorism (CFT) measures.
These are GIABA Statutory gatherings, hence a necessary piece of endeavor to guarantee MS’ consistence with AML/CFT guidelines and to cultivate local harmony, security, success, and joining in the ECOWAS district.
Giving a location at the initial service of the 36th gathering of GIABA Technical/Plenary Commission, Director General Justice Kimelabalou ABA called for cooperation among ECOWAS countries to battle psychological oppression.
“The event of psychological militant demonstrations and transnational coordinated wrongdoings in our space is substantial confirmation that AML/CFT frameworks are inadequate and neglect to keep hoodlums from completing their illegal exercises which bring them gigantic benefits that they wash as well as make accessible to fear monger people or associations.
“It is essential to increase endeavors with the goal that the suggestions figured out in the MERs in the illumination of the lacks recognized are completely executed to fortify the AML/CFT frameworks and empower functional entertainers to be more successful in their tasks,” Justice Kimelabalou ABA told the get-together of specialists drawn from the different ECOWAS states.
The Chairman of the GIABA Technical Commission said amidst the pressure in the sub-provincial set apart by the resurgence of political emergencies, all agents of part states should welcome the ability onboard to track down enduring arrangements.
On his part, Ghana’s Minister for Finance and Economic Planning, Mr. Ken Ofori-Atta wept over how illegal intimidation and tax evasion keep on representing a danger to the advancement of states under ECOWAS.
He said the peculiarity is supported by a few elements, including the presence of enormous, casual, cash-based economies, feeble and permeable lines, political precariousness, ethnic and public brutality, debasement, destitution, and joblessness.
The Finance Minister for Ghana underlined that now is the ideal opportunity for a cooperative work to battle illegal tax avoidance and psychological oppression subsidizing.
“Tax evasion, Terrorist Financing and the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (ML/TF&P) keep on presenting colossal dangers to the worldwide monetary frameworks, harmony, and financial turn of events. With the West African Sub-area not being left free as a bird, at present being a significant district of concern in regards to psychological oppressor financing and its exercises, you will all concur with me that there is the need to fortify coordinated effort among part States to control this danger with all its related predicate offenses,” Mr. Ken Ofori-Atta shared.
He added, “We should emerge and give inventive and aggregate preventive estimates which adjust to the developing dangers, construct versatility, and eventually forestalls the following security and compassionate catastrophe. Moreover, we should invest each energy to recognize wellsprings of assets for fear-based oppressor gatherings, freeze them, and utilize each legitimate means to guarantee they at absolutely no point gain admittance to the assets in the future.
“Individual members, I accept there could be no greater opportunity to act than now.”
A vital component concerning the current week’s gatherings is the way that there will be the thought and endorsement of the subsequent reports of the common assessment (ME) of part States’ degree of consistency with the FATF 40 Recommendations on AML/CFT.
Furthermore, the second Round of Mutual Evaluation Report (MER) of Guinea Bissau is to be considered at the Plenary while an update will be gotten on the ME of the Republic of Comoros.
For this meeting, members are dealing with, among different subjects, the accompanying reports:
the Summary Activity Report of the Chief Executive Officer;
the Report of the Co-Chairs of the GEC;
the second Round Mutual Evaluation Report of the Republic of Guinea-Bissau;
the Report of the Co-Chairs of the RTMG;
the report on the common assessments of Comoros, Guinea and Sao Tome and Principe;
the advancement report on the execution of the Action Plan for Improving the Efficiency of GIABA;
the Report of the 36th Meeting of the Technical Commission of GIABA.
