THE Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) has commenced another round of trainings for law enforcement agencies on financial investigation and asset recovery (FIAR) following requests by some member States namely Ethiopia, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
The FIAR trainings have been necessitated by the increasing sophistication of financial criminals coupled with the advancement in technology, making financial crime a transnational threat.
The complexity in the operations of financial criminals makes it complicated to recover ill-gotten assets and wealth.
“Given these developments, among others, it has become necessary for the different units responsible for FIAR to be equipped with skills that match current trends and developments in money laundering and terrorist financing, among others,” Comesa governance peace and security early warning analyst Tapera Henry Chinemhute said.
Chinemhute said the training would assist the 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 Standards.
Zimbabwe is the first country in the second round to receive the training, which began on Monday July 10, 2023.
It is being attended by stakeholders from the National Prosecuting Authority of Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission, the Financial Intelligence Unit, the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority and other policing agencies.
In November 2022, stakeholders in Rwanda went through a similar training.
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The first introductory regional FIAR training was held in Zimbabwe in October 2022.
