Fight against money laundering: existence of contradictory laws

The Great Island is still making its first steps in the fight against money laundering. However, that fight seems to be long and fruitless mainly because of the existence of contradictory texts in the legislative field. SAMIFIN’s General Manager, Jean Claude Razaranaina, said the anti-money laundering law stipulates that money transactions in the process of international trade should only be carried out via banking operations, and it also limits the transport of currency, at airports, to 6 million Ariary.

At the same time, other Foreign Currency Exchange Acts authorize the transportation of currency, from one country to another, without any constraints and without passing through any financial institutions. Jean Claude Razaranaina then stated that in order to solve this problem, traders, financial institutions, the government as well as the financial intelligence unit will soon get together to revise the anti-money laundering and currency emission laws.