IWT and Financial Investigations in West Africa – Paper Launch
‘Illegal Wildlife Trade and Financial Investigations in West Africa – Paper Launch’, 27 May 2021
In 2020, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) called on countries to assess their exposure to illicit financial flows associated with IWT and to pursue a greater use of financial investigations in IWT cases.
With input from the Inter-Governmental Action Group against Money Laundering in West Africa (GIABA), RUSI’s latest research report, entitled ‘Illegal Wildlife Trade and Financial Investigations in West Africa’, finds that no country in West Africa currently conducts routine parallel financial investigations in IWT cases.
This webinar explored the paper’s findings – including the results of a regional survey of financial intelligence units – and present RUSI’s recommendations for a West Africa Strategy on Combatting Wildlife Crime, to be ratified by heads of state from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) this year.
The event featured a moderated panel discussion with:
Muazu Umaru, Director of Policy and Research at GIABA
Kelechi Onwuegbule, Head of the Natural Environment and Wildlife Trade Crimes Analysis Unit, Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit
Mark Williams, Research Analyst, Organised Crime and Policing, RUSI
Mr Charles Balet, Permanent Secretary, Asset Recovery Inter-Agency Network for West Africa (ARIN-WA)
Alexandria Reid, Research Fellow and Deputy Chair of the Strategic Hub for Organised Crime Research (SHOC) at RUSI.
The event was provided in English, French and Portuguese.
This study was funded by the global project ‘Partnership against Poaching and Illegal Wildlife Trade in Africa and Asia’, implemented by Germany’s GIZ development agency on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety.
Watch here: https://rusi.org/events/open-to-all/paper-launch-illegal-wildlife-trade-and-financial-investigations-in-west-africa