Beyond borders, financial cooperation against human trafficking is essential (3/4)

“Criminals do not stop at borders: if we want to work on financial crime through the prism of human trafficking, we need to be able to work transnationally between countries, regions and continents”, explained David Hotte, team leader of the European Union’s Global AML/CFT Facility. During the workshop organised by the European Union, Expertise France and the Tunisian Financial Analysis Committee (CTAF), some thirty countries were thus gathered alongside international and regional organisations involved in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing (AML/CFT), such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The objective: discuss their respective challenges, identify ways to make their action more effective, but also get to know each other to facilitate cooperation afterwards.
 

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Stand together against criminal groups

All the speakers, unanimously and whatever their region of origin, stressed the need to apply international recommendations and develop cooperation at the regional and international levels in order to be able to conduct comprehensive financial investigations. Indeed, criminal and terrorist groups exploit the weaknesses of countries and their lack of dialogue to conduct their activities.

If one country in the region fails to apply internationally defined standards properly, it weakens all the countries. “The weak link becomes a source of vulnerability for the others”, explained Tuemay Aregawi, an expert on the AML-THB in the Greater Horn of Africa project. “There must be common responsibility and action”, he added, while deploring the fact that cooperation still remains weak between East African countries.

Strength of the regional link

In this context, the FATF-Style Regional Bodies (FSRBs) have a major role to play as intermediaries between the international and national levels. They assist countries with the identification of their risks by conducting assessments using FATF recommendations and help them apply them. The Intergovernmental Action Group against Money Laundering in West Africa (GIABA), MENAFATF – the FATF for the North Africa/Middle East region – and the Council of Europe were at the workshop and presented the initiatives they have developed in recent years. Mariam Ibrahim Touré Diagne gave details of the typology of human trafficking in relation to money laundering and terrorist financing elaborated by GIABA.
 

For further reading: TEH project: planning workshops to ensure project ownership by stakeholders

The UNODC regional office for the Middle East based in Cairo (Egypt), represented by Mona Salem, highlighted the production of tools, such as handbooks, as ways to build the capacities of countries in the region – for example, on the financial investigation of the smuggling and trafficking of human beings or the warning indicators for banks relating to trafficking. This is an interesting approach, as it implies strengthening cooperation on AML/CFT with the private sector and in particular with financial institutions.