Minister of State at the Finance Ministry, Dr. Mohammed Amin Adam, is advocating for fast-tracking legislation to streamline the operations of non-profit organisations (NPO) in a bid to strengthen the country’s anti-money laundering regime.
Dr. Adam told Parliament it is high time a law was established to streamline the operations of NPOs and curb what he described as “abuses and rising money laundering among NPOs”.
Even though a directive for the management of NPOs was approved by Cabinet and is being implemented, he emphasised that there is an urgent need for a proper legal framework.
The development forms part of interventions to sustain progress made under the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) observation process that required government to put in place adequate measures to further strengthen Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) regime.
An NPO bill has been drafted and is undergoing nationwide consultation. Upon approval of Cabinet, the bill will be forwarded to parliament for consideration.
The Minister of State’s comments were in response to a question from the MP for Keta, Kwame Dzudzorli Gakpey, on measures government is putting in place to save the country from returning to the money laundering list of the Financial Action Task Force.
It is to be recalled that Ghana was first subjected to a round of mutual evaluation by the Inter-Governmental Action Group against money laundering and terrorist financing in West Africa in 2009, and the country was subsequently blacklisted by the FATF in February 2012.
A Second Round of Mutual Evaluation was carried out in 2016; and though some progress had been made since 2009, strategic deficiencies remained. The 2016 evaluation formed the basis of Ghana being placed on the European Union’s list of high-risk countries with strategic deficiencies in the AML/CFT regime, in October 2020.
The country’s experience with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) ‘Grey list’ requires continuous prioritising of the issue – a development that informed government’s decision to adopt an Action Plan to address the identified deficiencies with the FATF.
Ghana completed the Action Plan ahead of schedule, and at the June 2021 plenary meeting of the FATF it was unanimously agreed the country had satisfactorily completed its Action Plan – and was removed from the FATF list of jurisdictions under the ‘Grey list’.
