Under pressure from the Financial Action Task Force, West African governments are trying to strengthen their financial intelligence agencies.

As the Intergovernmental Action Group against Money Laundering in West Africa (Giaba) prepares for its plenary meeting scheduled for the end of November, West African financial intelligence units want to comply with the requirements of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) based at the OECD headquarters in Paris.

Created in 2000 by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Giaba is located in Dakar. It is to him, in particular, that the national agencies responsible for combating financial crimes are accountable. He in turn returned it to the FATF, of which he was an associate member. The Giaba assessed Niger in January 2020. However, due to the coronavirus, it had to postpone its work on Togo and Guinea-Bissau, scheduled for March and October 2020, to January 2021. It will look at The Gambia in August 2021.

It was already under pressure from international institutions, led by the FATF and the European Union, that the various governments in the region had rushed to create their financial intelligence agencies. The latter are an important link in national anti-money laundering systems. The Centif (acronym for National Unit for the Processing of Financial Information) had flourished following a WAEMU directive in 2002, which itself followed the adoption of new recommendations by the FATF in October 2001. For example, Centif Niger was created in June 2004, Centif Senegal two months later, then Centif Côte d'Ivoire in August 2006. Within the WAEMU, the Centif also consult with the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO).

The risk for countries that do not comply with the fatf's wishes is great: it is on its recommendations that the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank or the EU base their own money laundering standards. The European institution placed Ghana or Mauritius on its blacklist in May on the basis of a FATF report. However, the EU attaches trade and financial sanctions to its lists.

Highly political intelligence investigations

Despite their efforts, the Centif face difficulties. In July 2020, the head of the Malian agency and Deputy Budget Minister Marimpa Samoura almost delivered an admission of failure. He acknowledged that of the suspicious transactions his agency had studied in recent years, few had ended up in court, let alone resulted in convictions. In 2011, the participants in the meeting of the Dublin Group, which brings together the main international donors in the fight against drugs, already deplored the non-functioning of the Centif of the WAEMU zone (Africa Intelligence of 22/09/11).

Conversely, other Centif are sometimes particularly active on certain very political issues. In 2013, the Beninese agency focused in particular on the businessman Patrice Talon (Africa Intelligence of 02/10/13). The Cotonou cell suspected the former cotton magnate, then in disgrace with President Thomas Boni Yayi, of laundering and embezzlement of public funds. The case was eventually closed, and Talon then elected president in 2016.