At the initiative of the Intergovernmental Action Group against Money Laundering in West Africa (Giaba), forty-five investigators and prosecutors specializing in the investigation and prosecution of economic and financial crime cases are participating in a regional workshop from March 22 to 26, at the Radisson Blu hotel, in the airport area.

The training workshop on financial investigations, organized in partnership with the German Agency for Development Cooperation (Giz), aims to strengthen the capacities of participants, particularly, on money laundering and terrorist financing cases. , as well as the tracing and recovery of proceeds of crime and stolen assets.

“The issue of money laundering is a major concern for the Ivorian government. It is at the heart of the action of the ministry for which I am currently in charge,” underlined the Minister of the Interior and Security, General Diomandé Vagondo. And for good reason, he will say, money laundering considerably affects the economy, by reducing tax revenues, and therefore, public investment. And hence growth.

The opening ceremony was chaired by. He took the opportunity to express his gratitude to the organizers for this initiative, which, he hopes, will contribute to effectively combating this scourge in the West African sub-region.

The participants, from the 15 ECOWAS States, will be seasoned to better explore new avenues, new methods for greater efficiency.
Idrissa Touré, President of the National Financial Information Processing Unit of Côte d'Ivoire (Centif-Ci), national correspondent of Giaba stressed that this training will allow the main national actors involved in the fight against financial crime, to measure indeed, the importance and the impact of their missions on the need to meet the major challenge of the effectiveness of the control system.
He also noted that technical advances in e-commerce, global diversification of financial markets and new financial products provide more opportunities to launder the proceeds of crime and conceal the path of money from of these activities.

For his part, Kimelabalou Aba, Director General of Giaba indicated that despite the high number of transnational organized criminal activities, the assessment reports revealed a low rate of investigations, prosecutions, convictions and confiscations of the assets obtained. by the commission of such offences.