K13.58 billion suspicious transactions made in 2023, Financial Intelligence Centre claims

Suspicious transactions worth K13.58 billion were detected in the latest 2023 report issued by the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC), representing an increase of 133 percent from 2022.

This is compared to K5.83 billion value for 2022.

The FIC Director-General, Clement Kapalu, made these revelations in his message as recorded in the ninth money laundering and terrorism financing trends report 2023 released this week.

Kapalu said the FIC analysed 15,696 suspicious transaction reports in 2023, out of which 923 intelligence reports were disseminated to Law Enforcement Agencies.

He noted that the majority of intelligence reports disseminated were on suspected money laundering, corruption and tax evasion.

This trend, he explained, was consistent with previous years.

“The abuse of corporate vehicles was a continuing trend in 2023. This was done by masking of beneficial ownership through various schemes such as usage of fronts and falsified documents.

“In majority of the cases, corporate vehicles had either not disclosed their beneficial owners with the Patents and Companies Registration Agency (PACRA) as required by the Companies Act No.10 of 2017 or disclosed ‘strawmen’ as beneficial owners,” he said.

Kapalu stated that the FIC continued to observe the trend in the use of cash to conceal the source of illicit funds and creation of some level of anonymity in the transactions.

He regretted that despite the increase in the availability of electronic payment channels, the FIC through its analysis observed an upward trend in the use of cash.

“The casino sector had also experienced heightened levels of vulnerability to money laundering and other financial crimes.

Through its analysis and supervision activities, the FIC observed that casinos would deliberately adopt an operating business model that was heavily reliant on cash transactions and as a consequence leave no audit trail.

“In this cash environment, some casinos facilitated the payment of bribes and possible understatement of their income.

Further, intelligence gathered indicated that some casinos engaged in illegal cross border cash courier business,” Kapalu said.

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