The Head of the Financial Intelligence Centre, Kwaku Duah, believes Ghana is in the position to correct and address all deficiencies that puts the country on the money laundering radar.
The European Commission on 7th May 2020 cited Ghana as one of four African countries listed by the European Union for money laundering breaches.
The decision puts financial transactions of Ghana under greater scrutiny.
However, the Ministry of Finance has described the decision as unfortunate, saying Ghana was not engaged, and that the methodology used in arriving at that conclusion was flawed.
The Head of the Financial Intelligence Centre, Kwaku Duah, who agrees with the Finance Ministry’s reaction to the listing, told Citi Business News Ghana can meet its deadline to the Financial Action Taskforce by December.
“It is the Financial Action Taskforce that would access Ghana. In fact, that is the world body that sets standards in the fight against money laundering and so the Financial Action Task Force, FATF, has been identified like it’s been explained in the statement that the Finance Ministry came out with. The Financial Action Task Force, FATF, has identified some deficiences in our Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) regime,” he said.
“…That is our money laundering regime and therefore they have drawn some action plans for us which we are following. They have given us up to December 2020 to address them. Then, the EU also comes out with this, meanwhile, per the standards Ghana is doing well. They access us periodically. We send reports to them and we do face to face meetings with them. So, per their report, Ghana is doing well, we have not faulted as far as the timelines given us is concerned so they are waiting till December. If by December we have not been able to address all the action items that is where they themselves will blacklist us,” he added.
Ghana was cited for money laundering breaches along with eight other countries.
These include Botswana, Mauritius, Zimbabwe, the Bahamas, Barbados, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama, Cambodia, Mongolia and Myanmar.
The actual inspection is set to only apply from October 2020 due to disturbances caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic.