Hertta-Maria Amutenja
Namibia has been given a year to resolve all findings in order to avoid a targeted Financial Action Task Force review. The country announced last month that it is making steady progress in addressing findings related to its Anti-Money Laundering and Combatting the Financing of Terrorism as well as the Proliferation Framework (AML/CFT/CPF) in order to maintain the integrity of the financial system.
This is according to Kristian Hamutenya, the Acting Director of Financial Intelligence Centre, who said added that Namibia underwent a second peer review which was aimed at assessing the country’s compliance with the United Nations Conventions.
“Following the review and adoption of the Mutual Evaluation Report, the country was given a year to close all findings in order to avoid a targeted FATF review. Namibia is going to great lengths to meet the deadlines in order to prevent the country being grey listed. Grey listing means that the FATF will closely monitor the country’s financial transactions with the rest of the world. When this occurs, the country’s financial system may suffer reputational harm, affecting foreign direct investments and capital flows, and increasing due diligence costs,” said Hamutenya.
Furthermore he said to effectively mitigate the risk of a targeted review, last year the cabinet approved a National Action Plan.
“This communication serves to invite inputs and contributions to the proposed Virtual Asset and Initial Token Offering Services Bill. If passed, this legal instrument will support the existing legislative framework, especially the FIA, in enhancing the supervision, licensing and monitoring of Virtual Assets Service Providers. All regulated entities, regulatory and supervisory bodies, civil societies, the academia, public and private sector role players, key stakeholders and members of the wider public are again invited to provide inputs and comments to the proposed amendments,” he added.
Meanwhile, the Namibia Revenue Agency together with the Bank of Namibia are working together to introduce a web-based regulatory system to mitigate the illegal outflow of funds from Namibia.
In a media statement today, Namra Spokesperson Yarukeekuro Ndorokaze said the Trade Verification System (TVS) is aimed at reducing illicit financial outflows and it will be used as a monitoring capability to reconcile the cross border transfer of money,to the movement of goods in the country.
The system, he said will be implemented in October and will involve the introduction of a field for the traders to report the trade transactions in foreign currency. Traders will also be required to insert invoice numbers on NamRa clearance. For ease of trade facilitation, traders will be enabled to upload trade documents and storage on the ASYCUDA system so that they no longer need to present the same at the commercial banks for payment.
Ndorokaze said that the system will facilitate the ease of identifying potential perpetrators of illicit outflows by the regulators and provide this intelligence for further investigations and possible convictions. The system will furthermore improve the collection of taxes and levies related to import transactions.
