Profile: Yotsna Lalji-Venketasawmy

Yotsna Lalji-Venketasawmy, legal adviser for the Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group (ESAAMLG), is working to help countries of Eastern and Southern Africa adopt a seemingly endless array of international standards against money laundering and terrorist financing.

“Money launderers are very smart,” says Ms Lalji-Venketasawmy, citing just some of the apparently ingenious lengths to which criminals go to mask the proceeds of their ill gotten gains – from swapping cold hard cash for poker chips at a casino to setting up an elaborate if entirely phoney trading enterprise.

“They are always finding new and inventive ways in which to launder money. We have to understand what techniques are being used by them so we can keep up with them,” she continues. “It is an ongoing learning experience.”

Funded entirely by the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Co-operation, Ms Lalji-Venketasawmy is on a two-year assignment to ESAAMLG, a regional body set up to improve the crime fighting capabilities of countries from Botswana, Mauritius and South Africa to Tanzania and Zambia.

49 international standards

From her office at the headquarters in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, the former Mauritius Financial Services Commission executive is coaxing each of the 14 members of ESAAMLG – 13 of which are Commonwealth countries – to implement some 49 internationally recognised standards on combating money laundering and terrorist financing.

“One of our aims is to raise awareness among the membership – to make sure our members have the required capacity to combat money laundering,” she says.

For the past year Ms Lalji-Venketasawmy has been working tirelessly on a project to identify individual countries’ compliance with worldwide financial standards formulated by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global intergovernmental body set up in 1989 to help institutionalise action against threats to the financial system.

Managing a process known as ‘mutual evaluation’, Ms Lalji-Venketasawmy has been overseeing, reviewing and compiling reports examining each country’s capacity to implement the FATF’s standards. The project, which involves an evaluation by ESAAMLG assessors and the member country, looks at the effectiveness of systems already in place – including regulatory frameworks and law enforcement powers – to combat money laundering and terrorist financing.

“We don’t want the criminals to get more powerful”

“The questionnaire sent to each country is very comprehensive,” she says. “They give us information and an assessment team studies the answers and undertakes an on-site visit to meet with government officials and private sector institutions.

“Once we have completed the exercise we have to compile a report of the assessment. The report sets out the level of compliance against the international standards and identifies any deficiencies in the implementation of standards, and makes recommendations on how to make improvements.”

Not constrained to Tanzania, Ms Lalji-Venketasawmy has visited officials in Seychelles, Zambia and South Africa in her pursuit. “We go to the member countries and ask them what their experience is,” she explains. “One of the things we are trying to understand is the magnitude of the funds that are flowing into the region.”

Ms Lalji-Venketasawmy is unflinching on the importance of counter money laundering and terrorist financing efforts in ESAAMLG countries, the fruits of which will, she says, undermine all kinds of criminality across the region.

“I’m very proud that I can actually help this organisation,” she states. “[Money laundering] affects the whole integrity of the financial services sector. Is it nice that criminals can buy banks or hotels? No. We don’t want the criminals to get more powerful.”

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