The Senate has called on the Government to strengthen measures against emerging financial crimes such as money laundering.

The members of the Upper House were Tuesday meeting several public and private sector officials to chart sustainable ways to contain cross-border crimes.

Senators in the consultative meeting on the state of cross-border crimes expressed concerns about cross cutting financial crimes whose risks can affect different sectors and plunge the country into economic losses.

Cyber financial crimes, according to experts, range from illegal transactions and illegal exchanges of foreign currencies, which can affect banking sector, insurance companies, savings and credit cooperatives and the entire state of the country’s economy.

"There are people who open offshore accounts and conduct businesses illegally, are we able to detect these flows of dirty money at an early stage?” asked Senator Perrine Mukankusi.

Mukankusi called for proper systems that can detect actions leading to financial fraud and insider dealings on top of foreign exchange malpractices.

The Commissioner of Criminal Intelligence Department (CID), Morris Murigo, said cyber and high-tech crimes constitute emerging threats such as cyber crime, cyber espionage, hacking, and cyber terrorism.

"Recently, we were informed of a case that involved attempt to steal about $700,000 (Rwf570 million) but we intervened in time,” he said.

To combat such crime, Police have been building capacity to handle dynamic crimes on the internet, enhancing cooperation with other police forces both at the regional and the global level, Murigo said.

ICT know-how

The cooperation, he added, will help the Force share crime-related information, expertise, experience and crime detection and prevention.

Dr Monique Nsanzabaganwa, the deputy governor of the National Bank of Rwanda, said the challenges in place require regular and updated ICT know-how to keep dealing with various forms of cyber-crime that are financial in nature.

"Money laundering is a global challenge and we have seen countries that have instituted stringent legal systems to deal with the issue. Rwanda has also set up some structures that can help us identify and analyse leads to those crimes,” she told the senators.

Nsanzabaganwa said the central bank was able to upgrade swift codes that can help detect transactions issuers, amount and where they are coming from.

"We are even able to detect people attempting to make multiple transactions of small money but to hide a bigger transfer, especially those whose affairs are suspicious and those who are on international blacklist,” she added.

She said that while other banks are yet to install internal controls to check the challenges, the Government has put in place directives compelling them to analyse and report suspicious transactions as stipulated by the law governing money laundering.

The deputy governor said partnership with Rwanda Utility and Regulatory Authority and other agencies dealing with cyber-crimes will need to be strengthened.

She called on financial institutions to cultivate a culture of credibility within their personnel.

"Most of these crimes are results of inside dealings and complicity between staff of the banks and some dishonest clients,” she said.

Impact (to the economy) of illegal transactions of cash, according to officials, can lead to liquidity problems through withdrawal of funds, termination of correspondent banking facilities, fines and investigation costs.

The same crime can also cause loss to the national budget (tax evasion), loan losses, declines in stock value of financial institutions, loss of control of economic policy, asset seizure, and confiscation and reputation risk of the country.

Article of 654 of the Penal Code punishes any person who commits money laundering or an accomplice to a term of imprisonment of between five and seven years and a fine of two to five times the value of the amount of the laundered sums.

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