By Sylvester Samba.
A one-week exchange/study visit by the AML/CFT Competent Authorities of Liberia led by the Director-General of the Liberia Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) took place between 12th to 16th April 2021. The exchange/study visit is anchored on the existing bilateral MoU signed in November 2014 between Liberia FIU and Sierra Leone FIU.
The visit was intended to allow a full study of all the processes leading to the Mutual Evaluation of Sierra Leone’s AML/CFT Regime during the Second Round of Mutual Evaluation which onsite took place in July 2019 and the final report adopted at the 34th Technical Commission and plenary meetings of GIABA held in Senegal in December 2020.
During the exchange/study visit, the Liberian visiting delegation met with all relevant stakeholder institutions within Sierra Leone for the purpose of understanding their roles and contributions within the country’s AML/CFT system and during the Sierra Leone mutual Minister of Finance (1), Management and Staff of the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), cross-section of members of the Mutual Evaluation Technical committee and competent authorities comprising Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), Office of the Registrar and Administrator General (OARG), Bank of Sierra Leone (BSL), National Minerals Agency (NMA), Immigration Department, Sierra Leone Insurance Commission (SLICOM), Association of Sierra Leone Commercial Banks (SLACB), Central Intelligence and Security Unit (CISU), Sierra Leone Police (SLP), Transnational Organized Crime Unit (TOCU), Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sierra Leone and Anti-Corruption Commission.
The Liberia FIU and Sierra Leone FIU also initiated discussion with Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA), Mano River Foundation for the submission of joint proposal for funding under the OSIWA’s Economic Justice Programme to address common challenges relating to cross broader activities including, but not limited to currency declaration, smuggling of goods, precious stones and metals, illicit financial flows (IFFs), counterfeit currencies and trade-based money laundering. Furthermore, both institutions discussed the need for increased intelligence gathering and sharing to counter the risks or money laundering (ML) and Terrorist Financing (TF), common to countries.
