FIU protects financial services sector |17 December 2009

This is the focus of a press release yesterday from the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) which, in conjunction with the Seychelles Police and represented by the office of the attorney-general, secured its first criminal convictions in relation to an attempted fraud of Barclay’s Bank (Seychelles).

The two British men had pleaded guilty to knowingly and fraudulently issuing a false document to Barclay’s purporting to offer a credit line of US $900 million.

The court judgment sends a clear message to the international community that Seychelles has the appropriate legislative framework and criminal justice system to confront and challenge crimes of this nature committed in the Seychelles jurisdiction, the FIU said.

Effective legislation addressing the issues of anti-money laundering and confiscation of the proceeds of crime was introduced in August 2008 with unanimous support in the National Assembly.

Its purpose is to ensure that criminals cannot use the Seychelles jurisdiction to benefit from their illegal activities. The legislation provides a lawful framework for:

● Preserving or freezing assets reasonably suspected of being the proceeds of crime, while
they are investigated;
● Protecting the rights of the individual by providing a protective mechanism for the owner of a frozen asset to show it has been obtained legitimately;
● Confiscating the asset if the court is satisfied that it represents the proceeds or
instrumentality of crime.
At a symposium held last week in Seychelles on Saying No to Corruption, a visiting Mauritian judge commented that Seychelles clearly has the “Rolls-Royce” of legislation in this important area.

Under the legislation, the FIU is the body established by government to challenge criminality by detecting and investigating the proceeds of crime and preparing court cases for the freezing and confiscation of criminally derived assets.

Since the FIU was launched in early 2009, it has investigated over 100 suspicious reports and conducted formal investigations into 37 cases.

To date, about a third of these cases have resulted in applications to the court for the seizure of the proceeds of crime, and three people have been convicted either in Seychelles or overseas as a result of these investigations.

Most of these cases target the assets of drug traffickers operating in Seychelles who are already the subject of criminal prosecutions, but a sizeable minority of investigations are international, where the crime has been committed outside the jurisdiction but the money or assets derived are being laundered in Seychelles.

In these cases, the crimes behind the money may include murder, multi-million-dollar fraud, nuclear weapons material proliferation, the underage sex trade and money laundering by organised criminal syndicates.

As a unit, the FIU is small and multi-disciplinary, with local and expatriate personnel. The leadership of the unit in the short-term is experienced and expatriate – in order to accelerate its development it was prudent to import key skill sets, knowledge bases and international links to equivalent agencies.

The skills of investigation and systematic intelligence production are critical and are augmented by the experience of local experts in financial services sector compliance, revenue, policing and other processes.

As capacity develops and experience is gained, local personnel are playing an increasingly important role and now represent 75% of the establishment. In 2009, the attorney-general’s office has been exclusively representing the FIU in the courts, but representation will be expanded to include eminent local legal practitioners in 2010 as more cases come to court.

By taking the profit out of crime, the FIU has the potential to severely disrupt domestic criminality and to deter the abuse of Seychelles’ financial services sector by international organised crime.

The FIU said Seychelles will continue to protect and develop its reputation as a nation that cherishes integrity and the rule of law and can be seen by the world as a place where criminality and corruption cannot hide.