By: Nghiinomenwa-vali Hangala
Namibia’s chance to be delisted as a country susceptible to financial crimes – due to its fragile ability to detect and stop said crimes – hinges on proving that it can investigate and prosecute money laundering and terrorist financing cases.
According to the update provided by the country’s financial watchdog, the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC), last week, the country managed to fix 11 of its 13 weaknesses, with the remaining two to be addressed before the next evaluation in May 2026.
These outstanding issues are both related to enhancing the country’s ability to identify, investigate, and prosecute money laundering and terrorist financing cases.
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has requested that the Namibian government provide proof through statistics and case studies that it has increased its investigation and prosecution of money laundering cases.
Secondly, it demanded that the same proof be shown for money laundering. The FATF notes that if by May 2026 the country shows improvements in its ability to address the remaining issues, it will be delisted from its grey status.
The request is, however, a test to the country’s ability to identify and prevent financial-related crimes, given various backlogs and court challenges. One of the biggest cases that involved money laundering, termed ‘Fishrot,’ which also contributed to Namibia being greylisted, is yet to be finalised and see prosecution take place.
After a number of suspects, including ministers, have been arrested and bail requests denied, a conclusion has yet to be reached.
The primary object of the combating and prevention frameworks around money laundering, terrorism financing, and the financing of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (ML/TF/PF) is to ensure these threats are prevented or detected and disrupted, and criminals are sanctioned while depriving them of access to their illicit proceeds.
Countries periodically assess the effectiveness of their prevention and combating frameworks with regard to domestic and international threats, gauging how susceptible they may be.
According to the FIC, the primary outcome of such assessment is to help inform and guide the implementation of prevention and combating frameworks at the national, sectoral and entity levels. Namibia completed its first-ever full scope national risk assessment (NRA) in 2012.
The 2023 assessment revealed that Namibia’s overall terrorism funding risk is Medium, with threats being rated low. Analysis suggests that an area of concern could be cross-border threats from persons (especially within Namibia) who may be sympathetic to terrorist groups or related ideologies beyond the borders of Namibia.
The 2023 NRA update also found that overall, close corporations (CCs) appear most prominently abused in advancing money laundering activities. Companies also appear to have been significantly abused, but to a lesser extent. Findings also suggest that only inter vivos trusts may have been abused in advancing money laundering. Additionally, all such trusts that have been the subject of investigations were Namibian-initiated or founded.
The FIC assists the government in reducing the ML/TF/PF forms of financial crimes.
erastus@thevillager.com.na
