Business Reporter
THE Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) has said that during the 2024/25 financial year, it restricted a total of N$96.9 million suspected to be proceeds of unlawful activities.
This is a substantial increase compared to the N$33.1 million in funds frozen the previous year.
The FIC is empowered to direct the temporary freeze of transactions suspected of being associated with unlawful activities or being the proceeds of crime or related thereto.
Acting as the Financial Intelligence Unit of the Namibian government, the FIC assists with combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism and has released its annual report at a time when Namibia has been added to the European Union’s (EU’s) list of high-risk countries for financial crimes such as money laundering and terrorism financing.
The EU move is linked to Namibia’s ongoing efforts to exit the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey list, where it was placed due to deficiencies in its anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing regime.
The country has, however, made significant progress towards exiting the FATF grey list, with a total of eight items addressed out of the 13 strategic deficiencies.
The FIC’s 2025 report detailed that a total of 565 proactive and reactive financial intelligence reports were produced, and from these, a total of N$96.9 million was provisionally restricted as suspected proceeds of unlawful activities.
A total of 148 criminal investigations were conducted by law enforcement agencies, and a total of N$79.95 million was contributed towards funds preserved in the High Court of Namibia.
Further to this, the use and integration of FIC intelligence resulted in 14 successful preservation orders by the Prosecutor General with a value of N$79.95 million, and three forfeiture orders with a value of N$5.4 million.
The report further cited that the 2022 Mutual Evaluation Report (MER) highlighted the inadequate usage of FIC intelligence and that the natural consequence of this was the inadequate finalisation of complex Money Laundering, Terrorism Financing, and Proliferation Financing (ML/TF/PF) investigations and prosecutions.
A key component of combating ML/TF/PF is the ability of supervised institutions to detect and report their suspicions to the FIC. During the review period, the banking sector submitted the most Suspicious Transaction Reports (STRs). Of the total 13,014 STRs, the banking sector filed 10,362 reports (80%), while authorised dealers with limited authority (ADLAs) filed 1,493 reports (11%). The report added that these sectors present the highest ML/TF/PF risks, particularly the banking sector, as it is a conduit for remittances used by all other sectors.
