three-day training programme on the prevention of Cross Border Bulk Cash Smuggling. The Inter-Governmental Action Group is the Financial Action Task Force-styled regional body of West Africa, responsible for combating the preventing money laundering and terrorist financing across the region.
Speaking during the event, Director General of the GIABA, Aba Kimelabalou, acknowledged that bulk cash smuggling and smuggling of goods continues to remain widespread in West Africa, and its adverse implication is that it provides the much-needed anonymity to criminals when transacting with illicit businesses, which not the case in bank transfers or online transactions.
“Recent Financial Action Task Force (FATF) report on Money Laundering through the Physical Transportation of Cash recognized cash smuggling as a significant risk, and that it was an increasing problem,” he added. “The report noted that cash is still widely used in the criminal economy and it remains the raw material of most criminal activity.”
Kimelabalou also pointed out that through the physical transportation of cash, the perpetrator is able to distance the criminal proceeds from the predicate offence and break audit trails.
According to the GIABA Director General, West African nations also lack the required infrastructure to detect and control such illicit transfers at the borders. “In most member States, critical agencies, especially the Customs lack the necessary technical capacity, including equipment to identify and detect a breach of the obligation to declare cross-border transportation of currency and BNIs, as well as undertake necessary investigation to establish the possible links between the amounts seized and possible cases of terrorist financing or money laundering,” he noted.
During his address, Kimelabalou went on to affirm that while cash remains strategically important for economic activities in West Africa, the objective of the programme was not to discuss how to entirely eliminate its use but to provide stakeholders with an opportunity to deliberate on the implications of cash couriering and to consider course of action to address the matter.
