REGIONAL ANTI-MONEY LAUNDERING COOPERATION IN THE AFRICAN UNION

Abstract

The major purpose of the paper is to discuss the problems relating to, and review the basic principles of, mechanism of anti-money laundering cooperation in the African Union. The latter is considered through the prism of efficiency in terms of institutional interaction among member states, and of the extent to which the potential of such interaction is fulfilled. Such approach, in turn, calls for: identification of forms in which the states in the region of concern cooperate on the subject-matter; assessment of the extent to which such forms are efficient and are comparable with those of the Council of Europe and the United Nations, and; definition of the perspectives for African Union’s anti-moneylaundering cooperation mechanism improvement. The paper includes the results of comparative analysis of various international conventions and local acts and regulations, and considers the compliance of regional “soft law” and institutional cooperation framework with the accepted anti-money-laundering standards, where it particularly discusses the characteristics of African Peer-Review Mechanism and the Centre for the Study and Research on Terrorism as essential elements for African Union member states’ cooperation. The author emphasizes several discrepancies, and concludes that, despite the existence of sufficiently developed regulatory framework in the region, its commitment to antimoney-laundering, and creation of the applicable monitoring mechanism, the African Union fails so far to achieve high efficiency implementing the proposed measures.

Keywords

• the african union
• regional cooperation
• counteraction of criminality
• financial criminality
• corruption
• money laundering