Typologies

This report conducts a threat assessment of money laundering and terrorist financing in the West Africa region, specifically in Benin, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, the Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal. The introduction outlines the objectives of the study and includes a
description of the methodology and operational approach, which included data collection from open source material, as well as a range of interviews with relevant observers, local officials, and key practitioners and decision makers. This was followed by detailed analysis seeking to examine the source of illicit funds, how they are laundered, and where they are being moved to, and in doing so, throw light on a range of issues, including the weaknesses in regional efforts to tackle laundering and the consequences of money laundering for the rule of law.

The first chapter addresses West Africa’s informal economy, which is a major vulnerability with regard to money laundering. It comprises perhaps 60-70% of formal regional GDP. In very general terms, the informal economy is the unregulated non-formal portion of the market economy that produces goods and services for sale. The large size of the informal economy in the region goes hand-in-hand with the cash- and commodity-based nature of the region’s economy. A distinction is drawn, though, between the merely informal on one hand and the outright criminal on the other; the major categories of predicate criminality for the purposes of money laundering being tax evasion and smuggling.

May 2010