FIC, GREDA to combat money laundering in real estate sector
The Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) is collaborating with the Ghana Real Estate Developers Association (GREDA), the umbrella body of estate developers in the country, to help reduce the incidence of money laundering in the real estate sector.
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The collaboration followed the realisation by the centre that GREDA was a key partner in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing in the country.
The Head of the Compliance Unit at the FIC, Mr Seth Nana Amoako, said the collaboration was taking the form of trainings, seminars and capacity building programmes for members of the association, which boasts over 200 companies nationwide.
It started about three years ago and has since succeeded in exposing players in the sector to the technicalities of the menace, a web of strategies used by people and institutions to conceal the actual sources of ill-gotten proceeds.
Need for regulatory body
At a seminar for members in Accra, where money laundering featured prominently, Mr Amoako said estate developers needed to be properly exposed to the dynamics of the menace to be able to help combat it.
He explained that after a risk assessment exercise on sectors that were vulnerable to money laundering activities in the country, the real estate business came up as one of the areas criminals used to conceal the sources of their wealth, hence the need for partnership to help fight it.
That effort, he said was, however, hindered by the unregulated nature of the real estate sector.
Given that the FIC relied on periodic reports and alerts from players in the fight against the practice and related criminal activities, Mr Amoako said the absence of a regulatory body for estate developers meant the centre had to deal with the companies individually.
"That makes the work tedious but we are happy an association like this (GREDA) exists. With GREDA, we are able to reach out to majority of them," Mr Amoako's colleague at the FIC, Mr Emmanuel Nikoi, said.
"If it is regulated, it will help remove the grey areas," he added.
Moves to formally regulate the real estate sector have been on the drawing board for years, with the GREDA always explaining that a regulatory body is needed to help sanitise the operations of estate companies.
A real estate agency bill, which was drafted last year, is now with Parliament and when passed, will help police the real estate agency sector, which has seen tremendous growth in recent past.
Mr Nikoi was hopeful the passage of that bill would help streamline operations and give the FIC a structured sector with which it could easily work with through information sharing.
Until that was done, he said the centre would continue to work closely with GREDA, which had also given its full backing to the fights against money laundering.
Increased awareness
At the moment, compliance with regulations on the practice is not limited to members of GREDA but extends to all real estate developers in the country and transactions in the country.
The Executive Secretary of GREDA, Mr Sammy Amegayibor, said the association appreciated the need to help fight money laundering and terrorist financing.
As a result, he welcomed the collaboration from the FIC and said the association would work to ensure that it delivered the needed results.
He said there needed to be a lot more awareness of the menace to help expose members and all other players in the sector to the practice and how it could be combated.
This awareness, he said, would help ensure smooth enforcement and compliance with the money laundering regulations.