STRENGTHENING OF THE CRIMINAL CHAIN IN THE ANGLOPHONE COUNTRIES

The activity supporting the AML/CFT criminal chain of the five Anglophone partner countries of the OCWAR-M project (The Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone) starts in January 2021.

The objective of this activity is to build the capacity of actors of the AML/CFT-specific criminal chain in these five countries to increase the effectiveness of the handling of ML/FT crimes and the seizure of assets. National experts from the criminal chain have been identified in conjunction with the FIUs and recruited in these five Common law countries – 2 to 3 experts per country, including a judge and/or prosecutor and/or investigator and/or analyst – in order to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the national systems and to consider appropriate training and support measures for activities in 2021-2022; these national experts are working with our team of international experts and key OCWAR-M experts.  

Our team of international experts specialising in the AML/CFT criminal chain of Common law countries includes a French judge, an Australian lawyer specialised in judicial systems and a British investigator.

To ensure that the context, legal framework and specificities of each country are taken into account, a total of 12 national experts have been recruited to form a “college of regional experts” whose mission is, first of all, to collect useful documentation for the diagnosis (legislation, case law, statistics and practical cases), then to exchange and design support programmes with international experts.

The objective is to strengthen the capacities and efficiency of the AML/CFT criminal chain by impacting all its actors: analysts from financial intelligence units, investigators, prosecutors and judges. Specific trainings, tailored to the identified needs, will then be implemented in the five Anglophone ECOWAS countries; these trainings will be based on the five pillars of the penal chain, namely crime detection and investigation, seizure and recovery of assets, prosecution, regional and international cooperation and trial.