Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs), which represent a country’s official authority for receiving financial information disclosures, are regularly at the forefront of tackling money laundering and terrorist financing. Not surprisingly, they also play a critical role in the asset recovery process. An increasing number of investigations leading to the tracing, identification, seizing/freezing and confiscation of illegal assets are triggered by FIU reports to law enforcement agencies.

Experts from the International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR), at the request of the Financial Intelligence Centre of Namibia (FIC), recently conducted a workshop on Advanced Operational Analysis in Windhoek, Namibia. It was attended by 27 participants, including financial analysts from the FIC, representatives from the Namibian Anti-Corruption Commission, the Namibian Police Force, the Office of the Prosecutor-General, the Ministry of Finance and the Office of the President.

This novel training programme combines ICAR’s e-learning module Advanced Operational Analysis, based on the Egmont Tactical Analysis course, with an interactive room exercise involving a real-life simulated operational analysis case scenario. The workshop is furthermore interspersed with occasional short lectures on the Namibian criminal framework and how this framework is best applied in such cases.

A key aspect of the training was the emphasis on inter-agency cooperation and coordination. A high-level panel discussion involving the main stakeholders dissected the challenges in Namibia and discussed possible solutions such as the establishment of a multi-disciplinary investigative task force.

One senior financial analyst from the FIC said that it was the best training she had ever attended on the topic and participants from the law enforcement agencies expressed their strong appreciation for this excellent opportunity to learn more about how the FIC operates and how they themselves might better benefit from the FIC’s intelligence products.