The Bank of Ghana is set offer training for financial institutions on the skills required to combat money laundering and terrorism operations.

The Central bank indicated that due to the high frequency of money laundering and related activities at microfinance institutions (MFIs), the training is geared largely towards them.

Dr. Joseph France, the Head of the Bank of Ghana’s Financial Stability Department, highlighted the inadequacy of skills and necessary knowledge required to fight these persistent crimes among these financial institutions.

The workshop, according to the bank, is aimed at providing these financial institutions with the necessary technicalities on how to detect and combat potential money laundering operations. On how to combat these frauds, insights and procedural solutions were provided by the bank.

“As you may be aware, the workshop will also facilitate the registering of institutions on the GoAML platform. This will go a long way to improve reporting to the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) by institutions in the sector and enhance collaboration between competent authorities.

“The GoAML application is a fully integrated software solution developed specifically for use by Financial Intelligence Units (FIU) by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).”
Dr. Joseph France

Participants in the two-day program, per Dr. France, will be better prepared to report and confront offenders of these money laundering practices.

“Participants will be taken through one of the key aspects of the Continuous Due Diligence (CDD) process of Transaction Monitoring (TM). Effective Transaction Monitoring will flag and report transactions that are unusual and suspicious to the FIC and prevent criminals from using institutions as a conduit to facilitate ML/TF.”
Dr. Joseph France

Dr. France noted that the Central Bank plans to expand these training and education programs to Rural and Community Banks as well as other financial institutions.

“This year, the Bank of Ghana is advancing the work it started last year by engaging RCBs and MFIs to support the expansion of Money Laundering & Terrorist Financing (ML/FT) risk assessment methodology of the Bank of Ghana by including the lower-tiered institutions (RCBS/MFS) across the country in the program.

“I am glad to announce that we have successfully completed the training program for the northern and the middle belts of the country and we are happy to commence with the southern belt …”
Dr. Joseph France

Ghana removed from FATF “grey list”

After enacting various legislations to criminalize money laundering and combat the crime, Ghana was detached from the global list of high-risk money laundering and terrorist financing countries.

Ghana has also been removed from the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) ‘grey list,’ after the global watchdog on money laundering (ML) and terrorist financing (TF) determined that the country’s anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing (TF) regimes were sufficiently strengthened in accordance with international standards.

The FATF praised Ghana’s significant progress in improving its anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing regime, noting that the country has improved the effectiveness of its AML/CFT regime and addressed related technical deficiencies in order to meet the commitments in its action plan regarding the strategic deficiencies identified by the FATF in October 2018.