Seychelles gears up for forthcoming anti-money laundering conference |10 January 2018
Seychelles is expected to host a high level meeting for the Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group (ESAAMLG) in August.
The organising committee met yesterday at the Liberty House to prepare for the meeting where about 400 delegates including 18 ministers will be flying in to attend.
The committee comprises chief executives, directors and key officers from various departments including the Seychelles Police, Seychelles Tourism Academy (STA), Seychelles Tourism Board (STB), department of foreign affairs, Central Bank of Seychelles (CBS), Seychelles Civil Aviation Authority (SCAA) department of information communication and technology (DICT), immigration department, Financial Services Authority (FSA), among others.
The discussion was chaired by the Minister for Finance, Trade and Economic Planning Dr Peter Larose.
During the five days that the delegates will be in Seychelles they will attend a task force senior officials meeting followed by a council of ministers meeting.
Aside from members of the ESAAMLG, Seychelles will be receiving representatives of observer organisations such as IMF.
The discussion centred on the assurance of security, good internet connectivity, transportation, protocol, the economic and publicity benefits, fast track to immigration desks among others.
Minister Larose said diligent planning will be undertaken to ensure that Seychelles leaves a lasting impression on our neighbouring countries who are members of the group.
“We need to showcase a good example in terms of opening up our banking system to show that we are not here to hide people’s money,” he said.
He emphasised on the importance of this meeting as Seychelles needs to avoid being blacklisted as we risk losing correspondent banking.
“We have to get it right from arrival to take off,” he said.
The director of the Seychelles Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) Phillip Moustache said Seychelles is a founding member of ESAAMLG since 1999 and we were supposed to host this event since 2013.
“According to the MoU each country has to host the annual meeting where we discuss the various issues related to money laundering and terrorism financing. This is the first time Seychelles will be hosting the meeting as we were supposed to host it in 2013 but we were not yet ready so we postponed it but the council of ministers says that this year we have to and everybody is looking forward to it,” he said.
He said that back then Seychelles was not prepared as we also faced certain economic restraints and that 2018 is the most opportune time.
He noted that Seychelles faces certain challenges which they expect to rectify after the draft report of the second round of the mutual evaluation assessment conducted by the ESAAMLG which ensures that a state is complying with the 40 recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) it issued in February.
Mr Moustache said the discussions went very well as all the stakeholders gave their commitment to this high level meeting.
The next meeting will be held in two weeks’ time and the stakeholders are expected to work together internally to ensure that everything goes smoothly.