Botswana’s failure to list Wilhelmina Maswabi, former Directorate of Intelligence and Security Services (DIS) Director General Isaac Kgosi and former President Lt Gen Ian Khama as terrorists is expected to spoil the country’s chance of being removed from the money laundering and terrorism financing grey list. Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Africa/Middle East Joint Group which is currently sitting to prepare recommendations for a final decision on Botswana’s status to be presented to FATF plenary session in a few weeks has brought up the Maswabi terror financing case. The Joint Group sought clarification from Botswana on the financing of terrorism case against Maswabi.
The charges against Maswabi were dropped on 17th November 2020. Botswana, however finds itself in a difficult position because it is currently in violation of its financing of terrorism laws by failing to list Maswabi and his alleged accomplices as terrorists. Botswana was required by law to have listed them as terrorists at the stage of investigation, long before laying criminal charges and committing the case to the High Court. In making its case for delisting, Botswana will be required to demonstrate that they do not only have the correct laws in place but also an understanding of how to implement those laws.
The lapse in the Maswabi terror financing case is a blot in Botswana’s pitch to the global watchdog that the country is taking concrete steps to fix gaps in laws to check money laundering and terror financing and should be taken off the grey list. Botswana authorities have been avoiding the Maswabi terror financing issue for some time. At the last FATF meeting in Morocco December last year, Botswana and other countries which are under increased monitoring were given the option to not report at this meeting given their focus on addressing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Botswana however chose to report and the issue of Maswabi’s terror financing case came up.
Botswana, however ducked out of discussing the issue, arguing that the case was still in its early stage and touched on national security issues. The terrorism financing charges against Maswabi were however dropped on 17th November 2020. This is in spite of the fact that in August 2020, Pricilla Israel of the Directorate of Public prosecution (DPP) informed the court that regardless of whether the mutual legal assistance request has been answered by South Africa, there was sufficient evidence locally to charge Maswabi and to add other persons to the charge sheet at the subsequent hearing.She further told the court that by December 2020 the DPP, based on local evidence will be ready to commit Maswabi and others to the High Court.
Botswana was mid last year confident that it was almost compliant in closing the strategic deficiencies that made it prone to financial crimes. In 2018, the conservative Botswana government was stunned by FAFT when it was listed alongside countries that do not comply with anti-money laundering and combating of the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT). The country was later flagged by the European Union Commission in March 2019 for lacking strategic deficiencies in AML/CFT regulations. In May last year, the issue of Botswana’s grey listing made headlines again after the EU kept Botswana in the “high-risk third countries”, which is a list of 22 countries.
There was immediate uproar to the latest list, forcing the Botswana government to clarify that the assessment was still based on old information, arguing that the country has now made significant progress. After passing a series of legislation in the last two years, Botswana requested for re-rating, with the meeting held in January 2020 where FATF International Co-operation Review Group Africa/Middle East Joint Group acknowledged Botswana’s progress towards adoption of the national AML/CFT strategy.
According to the latest ratings, Botswana has made significant progress, from being non-compliant in 23 matters to now only 6. Moreover, Botswana is partially compliant on 16 action items, up from 14 in 2017, and largely compliant on 13 requirements, an improvement from 2 recorded in three years ago. The country has full compliance to at least 6 regulations, compared to when it was zero before it passed some laws aimed at closing the strategic deficiencies. The FATF International Co-operation Review Group Africa/Middle East Joint Group then decided to extend the monitoring programme to December 2020, the period within which all action items should be fully addressed.
At the December 2020 meeting in Morocco, Botswana was given another extension. The FATF plays a central role in global efforts in combatting terrorist financing, through its role in setting global standards to combat terrorist financing, assisting jurisdictions in implementing financial provisions of the United Nations Security Council resolutions on terrorism, and evaluating countries’ ability to prevent, detect, investigate and prosecute the financing of terrorism.
