According to the director of the Financial Conduct department at the BNA, Osvaldo dos Santos, there is currently in Angola "a system capable of responding, capable of dealing with the prevention and fight against money laundering".
"And this is our situation today and it is the FATF [International Financial Action Group] and the Esaamlg (Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Group) who say that are the barometer of ranking ' on preventing and combating money laundering," said the official.
Osvaldo Santos was speaking during a seminar on the concepts of the system for the prevention of money laundering and financing of terrorism, aimed at journalists, in Luanda.
Angola was the subject of the last assessment on the degree of implementation of the Esaamlg recommendations in 2018, after complying since 2009, the year it was included on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) blacklist, which culminated in 2012 when its report was approved. mutual evaluation and was admitted as a member of the Esaamlg.
Referring to the assessments carried out in 2018 by the GAFI/Esaamlg, Osvaldo dos Santos said that the national system for preventing and combating money laundering "is doing well", noting, however, that the recommendations "are not static".
"They are updated periodically and today much faster. What happened with Angola is that we were evaluated in 2012 based on previous recommendations at the time called 40+9 (40 FATF recommendations plus the nine special recommendations on terrorist financing). Exactly, in 2012, FATF updated the recommendations and only 40 recommendations remained", he explained.
The BNA department director also announced that the new mutual evaluation process, processes and procedures aimed at verifying in each State the application/compliance with the Esaamlg recommendations, started on October 6, through documents that are sent to the agency's executive secretariat.
"A technical compliance questionnaire has already been sent and then the questionnaire for effective implementation will follow. The visit of the Esaamlg evaluators should take place in June 2022 and in 2023 a new mutual evaluation report for Angola will be approved", he said the responsable.
For the next assessment, he noted, "due to what the previous assessment was, from the point of view of technical compliance the country should have no problem", because currently the country has "the institutions and the legislation".
"It remains for us to prove that these institutions and this legislative framework are in fact applied, this is our challenge, which is to show the effective implementation of their legislative framework in accordance with the recommendations", concluded the BNA staff.
The mutual evaluation comprises two components, namely the evaluation of technical compliance, where the national legislation is verified in accordance with the FATF-GAFI recommendations, and the evaluation of the system's effectiveness, where the level of implementation of the recommendations is analyzed.
