Ken Ofori-Atta
PARLIAMENT HAS passed the Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Bill, 2020, intended to amend and consolidate laws relating to money laundering and provide for related matters.
Aimed at addressing certain strategic deficiencies and complying with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations, Government decided to repeal the current Anti-Money Laundering Act, 2007 (Act 749) and submitted to Parliament a new bill.
The Finance Minister, in a memorandum, said this was to also avoid a piecemeal legislation in addressing all the deficiencies in Act 749.
The bill was passed yesterday by a voice vote after it was read for the third time having gone through all the parliamentary stages.
It was first presented to Parliament and read the first time on Thursday, November 5, 2020.
In 2016, AML regime underwent a mutual evaluation exercise by the Inter-Governmental Action against Money Laundering in West Africa (GIABA), a body established on December 10, 1999 to protect the national economies and the financial and banking systems of signatory countries against the proceeds of crime and combat the financing of terrorism.
Ghana, in April 2009, was blacklisted by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). This was as a result of a first round of mutual evaluation exercise on Ghana by GIABA in respect of the compliance with the FATF recommendations.
Ghana scored zero out of the 16 key and core FATF recommendations, which required a minimum pass mark of 10 out of 16. This score led to the blacklisting of the country.
The Finance Committee, in its report, said the government, in a swift response, initiated measures to address the strategic deficiencies, including amending all relevant laws and enacting other enforceable measures to deal with the issues of money laundering. .
Due to the pragmatic measures taken by the country, the FATF Plenary recommended that Ghana should be taken off the blacklist permanently for exhibiting exceptional political and strategic commitment coupled with a high level of awareness of anti-money laundering and counter financing of terrorism measures.
In 2016, Ghana was again subjected to another round of anti-money laundering and counter financing of terrorism mutual evaluation exercise by GIABA.
The focus of the exercise was on technical compliance. It also assessed the effectiveness of the anti-money laundering and counter financing of terrorism regime of the country.
The report of the evaluation exercise identified some strategic deficiencies in the anti-money laundering regulatory framework.
Even though the result reflected significant improvement, it still did not meet the revised FATF methodology. Ghana was accordingly placed on the FATF “grey” list.
By Ernest Kofi Adu, Parliament House