Law enforcement agents undergo financial investigation training

THE Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) has embarked on a training programme on Financial Investigation and Asset Recovery (FIAR) targeting law enforcement agencies in the region.

The intervention follows requests by some member states including Ethiopia, Uganda, and Zimbabwe on the need to beef up the financial investigation architecture and enhance regional security standards.

Comesa’s governance, peace, and security early warning analyst, Mr Tapera Henry Chinemhute, said the FIAR training programme was necessitated by the sophistication of financial crimes.

He said these were ever-increasing with the advancement in technology and penetration propelled by globalisation, which makes financial crimes a transnational threat.

“The complexity in the operations of financial criminals also makes it complicated to recover ill-gotten assets and wealth,” said Mr Chinemhute in a statement.

“Given these developments among others, it has become necessary for the different units responsible for Financial Investigations and Asset Recovery to be equipped with skills that match current trends and developments in money laundering and terrorist financing, among others”.

He said the training programme will assist law enforcement agencies to be more effective in operations, procedures, and enforcement of FIAR in line with national legislation and international Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Standards.

Mr Chinemhute said Zimbabwe is the first country in this second round of the series trainings to receive the training, which began Monday this week. The training is being attended by various stakeholders from the National Prosecuting Authority of Zimbabwe, the Anti-Corruption Commission, the Financial Intelligence Unit, and the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority.

Others include various units from the Zimbabwe Republic Police such as the Criminal Investigations Department, Drugs and Narcotics, Commercial Crimes Department, and the Assets Forfeiture Unit.

Zimbabwe Republic Police

In November 2022 stakeholders in Rwanda went through a similar training while the first introductory regional training on FIAR was held in Zimbabwe in October 2022.

Other countries to follow are Uganda and Ethiopia from 17 – 21 July and 24 – 28 July 2023, respectively.

It is understood that representatives of selected Comesa countries will also participate in the training as a way of enhancing regional cooperation among the member states given the transnational nature of financial crimes. —chronicle