Money
laundering
By Arta Pllana and Jackson Allers
Hello and Welcome. From the Studios of UN Radio in Kosovo….
Roger Wilson
“If you are an outsider looking to
invest in Kosovo and you had the perception that Kosovo is in the control of
organized crime are you likely to invest in Kosovo? If you are honest with
yourself, the answers got to be NO!”
Roger Wilson head of the
Money laundering as a concept has
been around for centuries: money gained through criminal activities such as
drug trafficking is funneled through a bank to make it appear as if the money
is legally earned – “clean money”. Recognizing that money laundering threatens
Kosovo’s economic development and contributes to organized crime and corruption
– the UN Mission responded, creating regulations against money laundering - the
Financial Information Center was set up during the drafting of these
regulations.
Flamur Keqa is
Director of Banking Supervision and Licensing with Kosovo’s central banking
institution, Banking and Payments Authority of Kosovo or BPK. She
explains how the FIC is helping to establish credibility in Kosovo’s financial
sector.
Flamur Keqa
Before
the creation of the Financial Information Center, the only institution that in
a way monitored money laundering has been BPK and BPK until this year, and
financial institutions or to better say banks were not obliged to report every
transaction. With what we call big transactions, they did have to inform BPK
for those transactions.
Big transactions in this case meant bank transactions of
more than 10.000 Euros.
The
Roger Wilson is the acting head of the FIC:
Roger Wilson -Head of FIC
“The
FIC is primarily there to receive sensitive financial information from those
that are required to be compliant with the law to analyze and collate that
information. Although the information is received with other sources to produce
some form of financial intelligence that is usable for the law enforcement
authorities and possibly even the supervisory division of the BPK.“
The FIC identifies the proceeds of crimes through extensive
electronic and on-the-ground investigation. They then give all pertinent case
information to the courts and prosecutors. Deborah Wilkinson, an International
prosecutor, works closely with these reporting agencies – the BPK and the FIC.
She explains her role in the fight against money laundering.
Deborah Wilkinson
“The
role of the prosecutor in a fight against money laundering is to identify, lead
the investigation and prosecute criminal offence of money laundering and
variety of other offences defined in regulations and associated with money
laundering.”
But,
is a Kosovo haven for money laundering? Once again, Deborah Wilkinson:
Deborah
Wilkinson
“We
suspect and believe that there is a great deal of money laundering because
there have been so few controls on financial transactions for a long period of
time and when there is a few controls on financial transactions it is easy for
criminals to put their money that is earned illegally in to structures and hide
the fact that is earned illegally so yes we do believe there is a great deal
out there.”
The Financial Information Centre (FIC) and BPK officials have also been training
other Kosovo banks and their employees in anti-money laundering techniques.
Bank employees have to know their customers and identify suspicious
activity. Again, Roger Wilson, head of the FIC:
Roger Wilson
“To prevent money laundering is to make the banks aware of
what could possibly be believe to be a suspicious
transaction. If the employee has the suspicion it is a duty of that
employee to report through the bank there is suspicion and from the bank to
consider whether it is appropriate to disclose that information to FIC.”
Money laundering threatens Kosovo’s economic development and
often this development depends on foreign investment. The
This concludes today’s edition of UN Radio in Kosovo. Thanks
for listening and stay tuned.