-laundering and funding of terrorist groups as these activities threaten SADC economies. Treasury Permanent Secretary Doto James said in leading remarks to the virtual gathering that tackling the two challenges is of utmost importance as there are global sanctions related to the ills. This could damage our economies.
Figuring out how to make the campaign a success started several years earlier, with heads of police forces in the region – including members of IGAD, a sister intergovernmental organization on the Horn of Africa – met for laying out strategies to combat money laundering. The ministers’ discussions would thus be a follow-up of what was achieved from those strategies, on the basis of the need to demonstrate progress in that area especially before global institutions. It was said that some SADC countries risk sanctions over failure to meet conditions provided by the Paris-based global Financial Action Task Force.
It is an inter-governmental organization set up in 1989 to fight money laundering and the financing of terrorism, but it is evident that it has only obtained modest success in cutting links and tentacles of terrorist organizations, not to put an end to their activities. In countries with remarkable depression of law and order, terror organizations run swathes of territory, and can do what they please in those areas, in contempt of whatever domestic or international law provides. That is why it is vital to fight budding cells of financing terrorism; otherwise they grow to become a cancer, making a country totally ungovernable.
There are other risks that are tied to money laundering, though these tend to be mixed, as money laundering isn’t just the traffic of drugs and ‘washing’ illicit earnings to bank the proceedings. It is also an aspect of tax evasion, where the standards differ from one country to another, and even from one social system to another. There are major economies around the world whose conditions for opening bank accounts and placing deposits are not different from offshore tax havens, where there is little or no tax.
In that case there are also auxiliary fears with attracting foreign investments if a country isn’t making sufficient progress in that regard, but let it be admitted that plenty in what goes as foreign investment is but form of money laundering. Thus depending on ethical governance level in each country, as well as its socioeconomic orientation, there are differing yardsticks as to what foreign investment is and what is money laundering. We have seen the fifth phase government taking extensive measures to weed out elements or signs of money laundering in operations of foreign exchange bureaus, but by other criteria that would be plausible flow of foreign exchange. As it is usual with sin, the fight is with oneself first.
What was rather surprising about the meeting was that it was also examining where SADC has reached with the Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan. It was launched in a 2003 Vision for attaining a SADC Free Trade Area by 2008, SADC Customs Union by 2010, SADC Common Market by 2015, SADC Monetary Union by 2016 and regional currency by 2018. Where therefore did we get lost?
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