Swaziland: Financial expert hired to investigate suspicious transactions

By Alec Lushaba

The Central Bank of Swaziland has hired the services of an international financial expert to do a thorough investigation on numerous suspicious transactions reported by local financial institutions.

Both the CBS Governor, Martin Dlamini and Finance Minister Majozi Sithole revealed the hiring of the South African based expert.

This follows a meeting between the Prime Minister, Barnabas Sibusiso Dlamini, the finance minister and the Governor where a decision was taken to deal with elements of money laundering which appeared to be on the rise.

The Central Bank of Swaziland, as regulator of financial institutions, encourages banks to know their customers to the point of knowing how they conduct their transactions.

Transactions that are conducted in a manner that raises questions to a bank are reported that to the CBS, which then reports such cases to the ministry for either policy development or legal action.

Sithole told the Weekend Observer that since the passing of the Money Laundering Act in 2001, nothing had been done in terms of applying the law, since it was not yet clear who has to investigate the cases.

“In our meeting with the Prime Minister, it was decided that the CBS, which gets these reports, must investigate the cases and then deal with those that are criminal in nature.

“In the meantime, we are busy pushing for the amendment of the Money Laundering Act to establish the Financial Intelligence Unit and further tighten the law to bit.

“Those that will be found to have operated dubious transactions will be dealt with using the existing law,” Sithole said.

The CBS Governor said cases of suspicious transactions are so many that they are now alarming.
“We are talking here of huge amounts of money that raises a lot of questions in terms of where they originate.

“I can assure you that we will deal with all cases that were reported to us, it does not matter whether the account is live or not. We have the information and we will follow and where there is evidence we will prosecute,” Dlamini explained.

He said the expert has already started working on the suspicious accounts and what will follow will be the process of the law.

When asked how many such accounts are under investigations, Dlamini said they are so many, but wouldn’t like to divulge the figure as that might disturb their investigations.

Source: The Swazi Observer