The project allowed the sharing of experiences with Portugal, Brazil, South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique, Italy, Peru, Canada, Switzerland, Nigeria, Kenya, Germany and the United Kingdom, said Inocência Pinto at the closing ceremony of the Support Project Strengthening the National Asset Confiscation System in Angola, financed by the EU (PRO.REACT).
"This joint effort was fundamental for the training of judicial and judicial operators in matters of money laundering and related crime, with an impact on the quality of investigations and consequently on the recovery of assets, as well as national and international coordination and cooperation", she said.
The project started in 2021, promoted 44 training actions and the training of 32 Angolan trainers, she said.
According to the Deputy Attorney General of the Republic, "PRO.REACT achieved the objectives it proposed in relation to the development of an effective system to combat illicit financial crimes and the strengthening of anti-money laundering capabilities".
"The closure of PRO.REACT does not presuppose the cessation of the efforts of the bodies that contribute to the prevention and repression of money laundering, the financing of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, in the training of their staff", assured the responsible.
The PRO.REACT national trainers grant should constitute "an incentive to continue training alongside other initiatives", she said.
Hermenegilda Gomes, responsible for supervising the Capital Market Commission (CMC), also participated in the closing session, speaking about institutional cooperation and coordination in preventing and combating money laundering, pointing out staff training as challenges, defending that Angola should include issues of preventing and combating money laundering in the university curriculum.
The economist from CMC's financial intermediation and market infrastructure supervision department said that coordination and cooperation between institutions is not enough "if the most important asset, the human asset", is not prepared to provide answers.
Hermenegilda Gomes stressed the importance of technicians being trained to detect suspicious operations, praising the positive results of PRO.REACT in this sense, which helped trainees to understand how the process works in practice.
PRO.REACT was a joint initiative between the European Union and the Government, in collaboration with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the Attorney General's Office of the Republic of Angola.
