Angola’s Efforts to Combat Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Receive Mixed Assessment

Lisbon - Angola has made significant improvements to its legal framework for combating money laundering (ML) and terrorist financing (TF), but its efforts are hindered by a lack of effective case management, statistics, and prioritization mechanisms. This is according to the latest assessment by the European Society of Anti-Money Laundering and Combating Financing of Terrorism (ESAAMLG).

Positive Developments

• Angola has established a national financial intelligence unit (FIU) and implemented measures to prevent TF.
• The FIU has autonomy and operational independence, with reasonable capacity to perform its core functions and access to various databases to analyze transaction reports.

Challenges and Concerns

Case Management and Statistics

• ML investigations and prosecutions are limited, with most cases focusing on corruption offenses rather than high-risk crimes such as human trafficking, drug trafficking, and environmental crimes.
• No effective case management or prioritization mechanisms are in place.

National Risk Assessment (NRA) Report

• Angola has not introduced enhanced measures to address high-risk scenarios identified in its NRA report.
• The country has not designated non-profit organizations (NPOs) as reporting entities, despite being a major vulnerability for TF.

Intelligence Reports and Parallel Financial Investigations

• The FIU’s intelligence reports are largely based on transaction reports from commercial banks, with limited or no reports from designated non-bank financial institutions (DNFBPs) and some non-bank financial institutions.
• Angola has limited understanding and capacity to conduct parallel financial investigations to identify ML cases effectively.

Confiscation Procedures

• Angola has demonstrated a policy objective to curb ML through confiscation procedures, mostly for corruption-related offenses.
• However, this policy objective has only manifested in relation to the recovery of proceeds of corruption-related offenses, with no tangible efforts to pursue proceeds of other high-earnings-generating offenses.

Conclusion

While Angola has made some progress in combating ML and TF, more needs to be done to equip competent authorities with adequate capacities to identify ML and TF cases and to develop relevant AML/CFT policies informed by identified risks.