08 Jul 2024

The Administration of Justice, Financial Intelligence Agency (FIA) and University of Botswana (UB) held a colloquium to enhance judicial officers' understanding of their role in illicit financial flows value chain in line with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Standards.

The meeting, which started yesterday and will take three days, follows recommendation 2 (National cooperation and coordination) of the FATF.

For his keynote address, Chief Justice Terrence Rannowane said an effective criminal justice system was a key aspect of rule of law as it constituted a mechanism to redress grievances and bring action against individuals for offences against society, which contributed to the maintenance of peace and tranquillity within the country.

Therefore, he said money laundering undermined the rule of law as it enabled criminals to disguise the illicit origin of the proceeds of crime and enjoyed them without being exposed.

Furthermore, Justice Rannowane said money laundering underpinned and enabled most forms of serious crimes such as corruption, illegal wildlife trade, drug trafficking, cybercrime, tax evasion and obtaining by false pretences (fraud) amongst others.

These offences are generally committed for the purpose of private gain and the proceeds are often laundered so that they can be enjoyed without fear of detection or confiscation, he said.

Similarly, the Chief Justice said terrorism financing was the lifeline for terrorists and terrorist organisations as they needed money to sustain themselves and carryout terrorist acts, adding that the money could come from legitimate sources, for example from business profits and charitable donations, or from illegal activities such as trafficking in weapons, drugs or people.

Justice Rannowane said money laundering and terrorism financing throve in exploiting different national laws and jurisdictional limits, making them attractive as transnational offences.

Added to that, the chief justice said globalisation, digitisation and other advances in technology such as virtual assets presented challenges in investigating and prosecuting money laundering and terrorism financing as the underlying criminal conduct may take place across national borders.

"The FATF Standards are important tools in the fight against money laundering and terrorism financing as they support the detection, tracing, prosecution, confiscation of illicit proceeds and promote international cooperation. Accordingly, this colloquium presents an opportunity for the judiciary to appreciate these standards," he said.

He said the programme also presented an opportunity for us to reflect on the key findings of the 2017 Mutual Evaluation Report in relation to the role of the judiciary in curbing financial crime and how we have evolved since then, he said.

From a statistics perspective, Justice Rannowane said Botswana appeared stagnant on prosecutions of money laundering.

He said in the 2017 report, Botswana had two convictions on money laundering and between 2019 and 2023, Botswana has two other convictions for money laundering.

However, he said, there appeared to be some improvement on removing profit from crime, adding that in 2017, there were three cases before the courts on asset forfeiture.

Between 2019 and 2023, he said the courts issued 61 restraining orders under the Proceeds and Instruments of Crime Act and five final confiscation orders restraining about P78.3 million and confiscating about P6.4 million respectively.

For her remarks, FIA director general, Ms Bopelokgale Soko said Botswana's next FATF Mutual Evaluation was expected in January 2027 and for it to start in 2027, Questionnaire pertaining to the ME was normally sent six months before the actual onsite assessment, and in the case of Botswana, this will be in June, 2026.

Ms Soko said this meant that Botswana only had two years to prepare for the next mutual evaluation.

She said the FATF through the ME process, tested the effectiveness of the judicial system in achieving this important mandate through a number of variables, chief among them, the time taken to close the case and the strength of sanctions imposed on these crimes, particularly if the sanctions adequately reflect the nature and gravity of the crime and their ability to deter future crimes.

She said judges were influencers in shaping the future and setting the tone of the AML/CFT Framework of Botswana as their decisions could set precedent on how future cases would be handled.

"We acknowledge that prevailing on ML cases is not always easy as criminals continue to invent new methods of committing the crime and avoiding detection and continue to perfect the ways of avoiding conviction, thus rendering the AML/CFT framework ineffective," she said.

She said the colloquium  provided an opportunity for judicial officers to come together and collectively assess the effectiveness of their anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing efforts.

In addition, she said it was an opportunity for peer learning, exchange of ideas and a safer platform to challenge their thinking, tackle the pain points, and discuss the way forward.

Ms Soko said it was for that reason that they had invited Justice Redson Kapindu of the High Court of Malawi to this Colloquium as he sat at the Financial Crimes Court of the High court of Malawi and therefore frequently dealt directly with issues of money laundering. Ends