Arinsa News
____________________________________Covid-19 relief: NPA freezes 28 bank accounts as huge UIF ‘fraud’ comes to light
Pretoria, SOUTH AFRICA. Nearly
R6m in Covid-19 relief funds - intended for 200 workers at risk of
starvation - were diverted to one man in what Asset Forfeiture Unit
(AFU) investigators are calling a glaring instance of fraud and
money-laundering. In what appears to be a manipulation of the
Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) relief system that has given a
lifeline to 3.6-million people, a large labour broker's Covid-19
Temporary Employment Relief Scheme (Ters) claim was allegedly paid to
one man - Tshepang Phohole.In an instant he went from having R12 in his account to more than R5m, much of it then quickly funnelled to friends. Within five days he had blown through nearly R5.7m, and the AFU and police are now probing the UIF to establish whether employees acted in concert with Phohole. On Friday, the graft-busting unit of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) secured a preservation order from the Pretoria high court, freezing money in 28 bank accounts.
The NPA's Sipho Ngwema said investigators acted quickly to secure the money that remained. "We placed our focus on securing the stolen money as quickly as possible. Law enforcement agencies have come together to form an oversight structure which seeks out Covid-19-related corruption and that is how this incident was picked up," he said. Read More ....On May 14, its application said, Phohole's bank balance surged from R12.46 to R5,688,814.66, and he immediately began channelling the cash to people in his circle of friends in and around Pretoria. By May 27, when the Financial Intelligence Centre froze Phohole's account, only R7,155.86 remained. Another R100,201.33 was found in another Capitec account in his name, and a total of R3.2m in friends' accounts. There is no information about what has happened to the remaining R2.4m.
____________________________________EU lists Mauritius as high-risk country for money laundering
May 2020. The European Commission (EC),
the executive branch of the EU, put Mauritius on its list of high-risk countries with strategic deficiencies in their anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing frameworks.- Signals that Mauritius could be blacklisted started earlier this year when the county was put on the FATF’s “grey list” if they did not curb the mushrooming of terror funding and money laundering activities.
- Several investors in East Africa, like commercial and investment banks and insurance firms, have registered firms in Mauritius because of the tax benefits, eliciting calls for investigations of the double taxation agreements. Read More ...
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ZIMRA Official house forfeited to the state
Harare, ZIMBABWE. Former Zimra revenue
officer Mr Kennedy Nyatoti has made history by becoming the first person to lose assets under Zimbabwe’s civil-based asset forfeiture law when his US$150 000 mansion and US$10 000 car were forfeited to the State after he and his divorced wife
failed to explain how they could afford these.Mr Nyatoti’s lawful income between October 2014 and May 2018 was US$44 907, and it was established that he neither had private income nor was he running a private business. So he failed to explain how he managed to build the US$150 000 mansion in Mabvazuva suburb in Harare and buy a Honda CRV valued at US$10 000.
Zimra’s lifestyle audit team discovered the mansion and car, after perusing the claims made during the divorce proceedings between Mr Nyatoti and his wife. Read More
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DPP, EACC hand over Ksh.2B of corruption proceeds to Covid-19 emergency fund
Nairobi, Kenya.
The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) on Tuesday presented a donation of Ksh.2 billion to the National Treasury as part of efforts to beef up the Covid-19 emergency fund.DPP Noordin Haji and EACC boss Twalib Mbarak, while issuing the dummy cheque to Treasury Cabinet Secretary Ukur Yatani, said the funds were part of recovered proceeds of crime such as corruption and money laundering.
DPP Haji said the prosecution fund established last year had so far netted Ksh.2.9 billion, from which the Ksh.2 billion presented to Treasury had been retrieved to aid in the fight against the novel coronavirus.
“We have various institutions dealing with corruption. A lot more money is out there but because cases are not complete, we can’t use it. We have to wait for the cases to be complete,” noted Haji.. Read More ...
____________________________________How U.S. Firms Helped Africa’s Richest Woman Exploit Her Country’s Wealth
It was the party to be seen at during the Cannes Film Festival,
where being seen was the whole point. A Swiss jewellery company had rented out the opulent Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc, drawing celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio, Naomi Campbell and Antonio Banderas. The theme: “Love on the Rocks.”Posing for photos at the May 2017 event was Isabel dos Santos, Africa’s richest woman and the daughter of José Eduardo dos Santos, then Angola’s president. Her husband controls the jeweller, De Grisogono, through a dizzying array of shell companies in Luxembourg, Malta and the Netherlands.
But the lavish party was possible only because of the Angolan government. The country is rich in oil and diamonds but hobbled by corruption, with grinding poverty, widespread illiteracy and a high infant mortality rate. A state agency had sunk more than $120 million into the jewellery company. Today, it faces a total loss. Read More ...
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APA and UNODC join to combat wildlife crime
PRETORIA, 6 February 2020 – A three-day high-level combating transnational
organised crime and enhancing asset forfeiture conference jointly organised by the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Southern Africa and the African Prosecutors Association (APA), in co-operation with UK Department for International Development
and United States, International Narcotics Law Programmes was concluded in Pretoria. This workshop was part of a bigger initiative that included the deployment of mentors, national and regional workshops and the development of training manuals.
Together, all of these initiatives are aimed to help to achieve the 2030 Agenda advancing the targets and indicators of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 1, SDG 8, SDG12, SDG14 and 15. This workshop also addressed SDG 16 and 16.4 that deals with
Illicit Financial Flows. Read More ...____________________________________
Luanda Leaks show large firms aided Dos Santos' offshore empire
A trove of 715,000 leaked emails, charts, contracts, and audits
details how the daughter of the former Angolese president Isabel dos Santos, reportedly Africa’s richest woman, managed to amass and shield her billion fortune with the help of western consulting and accounting firms. Boston Consulting Group, Price
Water house, PwC, McKinsey & Company, and Accenture provided financial services to do Santos and her husband, Sindika Dokolo, a high-profile Congolese businessman and art collector, that allowed them to safeguard their fortune abroad.. Read More ...____________________________________AML: A Shocking $8.14 billion of fines handed out in 2019
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A shocking $8.14 billion of fines for
AML handed out in 2019, with USA and UK leading
the charge. Encompass Corporation, a fast-growing provider of intelligently automated Know Your Customer (KYC) solutions, has carried out an analysis of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) related penalties handed down between 1 January and 31 December 2019.
Key observations:
- 58 AML penalties handed down globally in 2019, totalling $8.14bn
- This is double the amount, and nearly double the value, of penalties handed out in 2018, when 29 fines of $4.27bn were imposed
- Regulators in the USA were most active, handing out 25 penalties totalling $2.29bn
- UK followed with 12 fines totalling $388.4m
- Largest monetary fine was $5.1bn and originated from France
- Average monetary fine for 2019 was $145.33m
- 2019 was record year, in terms of number of penalties handed out (58), ahead of 2016 (47)
The Organised Crime Index - Africa 2019
Lives are lost, forests and oceans are pillaged
beyond the point of replenishment, animals are slaughtered, women, men, girls and boys are held in situations of violent abuse and exploitation. Customs officials receive bribes to turn their backs to a shipment of drugs. Police officers and soldiers
sell their weapons on to street gangs. Politicians accept kickbacks, fix contracts and sell concessions to criminal groups and unethical corporations, so that they can profit from resources that were intended to improve the development opportunities
of citizens. The harms caused by organised crime are widespread and profound Yet because it is almost always obscured in the 'underworld', hidden in the shadows of remote borderlands, concealed in secrecy jurisdictions or felt most keenly by underserved
communities, organised crime is a threat too easily overlooked 'Organised crime' is not a term that has tended to be used in the African context. However, as the political economy of the continent is evolving and intertwining with other geopolitical
and globalisation dynamics, the term is currently being applied to the continent with increasing frequency – and urgency It describes everything from a range of illicit activities and actors, from human smuggling by militia groups along the North
African coast... Read More ...
______________________________________A Lambo, and other luxury cars seized during formwer eTekwini mayor - Zandile Gumede and co raid
Durban, South Africa. The Amaoti home of former eThekwini Mayor
Zandile Gumede and luxury cars from her co-accused in the Durban Solid Waste tender scandal were among the assets seized by authorities on Thursday. The Hawks together with the Asset Forfeiture Unit (AFU) of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) swooped in on the fraud, corruption and money laundering accused in the matter.
While authorities managed to seize Gumede’s Amaoti luxury home, they were given an early morning surprise when she was not at her palatial Umhlanga home – the address she provided to police as part of her bail conditions.
“It only transpired today that she was renting that house,” Hawks spokesperson Brigadier Hangwani Mulaudzi said. Read More ...
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ESWATINI Signs the Dar es Salaam Declaration on strengthening asset forfeiture for development
MBABANE – "Be afraid. Be very afraid". This above phrase which originated from the
1986 horror film, They Fly, could be used as a warning to criminals especially
those involved in international crimes. Those who will be found to have been involved in international crimes can now have their offshore or international assets forfeited to the State.
This is because the Government of Eswatini is now a fully-fledged member of the Asset Recovery Inter-Agency Network of Southern Africa (ARINSA) following the signing of the Dar Es Salaam Declaration on strengthening asset forfeiture for development.
The signing was held yesterday at the Cabinet offices where the Director of Public Prosecutions Sandile Phila Dlamini had the honours of signing it in the presence of the Prime Minister Ambrose Dlamini. Read More ...
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