The Director General for the Financial Intelligence Agency, David Borbor will be marking four years in his role this December. In those four years he has transformed the institution and built on its credibility to strengthen the financial landscape in Sierra Leone.
Despite the successes he has achieved in the last four years as the DG, Borbor has started serving and shaping the future of what is now the Financial Intelligence Agency, since 2005.
Currently the FIA is very close to joining the prestigious Egmont Group, something he had laid the building blocks for since 2019, when he was serving as a director.
“We have been able to review our laws and put a much more robust regime in place, especially in areas where we had problems of compliance” he said at the weekly government press briefing on Tuesday.
“We have a team of experts from Ghana and Nigeria, who are here for their final field assessment, to evaluate our state of preparedness,” DG Borbor added.
The Egmont Group is a global network of Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs) from various countries, established to promote cooperation in the fight against money laundering, terrorist financing, and other forms of financial crime.
David Borbor was the key anchor and coordinator for the country during the onsite mutual evaluation of Sierra Leone in July 2019. During this period, he served as principal liaison between the GIABA Assessment Mission and all relevant competent authorities.
Due to his understanding of FATF standards and methodology for assessment, he was pivotal in guiding the country’s response to issues concerning the assessment process. He then worked closely with the AML/CFT stakeholders to develop an implementation plan. The plan included a review of the AML/CFT Act, 2012, Strengthening AML/CFT Risk understanding across all sectors, improving international cooperation leading to intelligence sharing with other countries and enhancing the tools at the disposal of the Financial |intelligence Agency to support data analytics.
Today Sierra Leone has a very high rating of safety for financial investments, by continuously improving the systems to decriminalize the financial system in the country.
Through his leadership and ability to coordinate other major government and international bodies, FIA has achieved the following:
Successfully collaborating with the relevant domestic and international partners in the fight against economic crime and illicit financial flows in all its various forms including the recent emergence of pyramid schemes.
Continuous efforts to decriminalize the financial system by:
- Effectively monitoring domestic and international transactions and also potential suspicious or criminal activity through effective statutory reports forwarded by reporting entities.
- Collaborating with the Bank of Sierra Leone in ensuring a sanitized financial inclusion system through a robust declaration and source of funds regime
Facilitating the enactment of a new legislation the AML/CFT/PF Act 2024, which repealed and replaced the AML/CFT Act 2012.
Continuous improvement of our operational systems and processes in preparation for ascending membership of Egmont group of FIUs.
Decentralizing the Agencies operations through regional deployment of staff at the provincial headquarters towns and crossing border points.
Issuing policies that have been collaboratively developed with all international and domestic stakeholders to regulate financial transaction activities in various sectors including the directives and guideline for mobile money services providers (MMSP).
Conducting studies on critical sectors to understand trends, patterns and methods of existing and emerging financial and economic crime activities.
DG Borbor has also been a big supporter of capacity building programs. He has initiated several of these programs for FIA staff to firmly position the institution in mounting a robust campaign against the twin scourges; of money laundering and terrorism financing.
He has also led Continuous capacity building sessions for the board, management and staff of reporting entities across the country to enhance their skill set and competencies and also increase awareness of emerging trends of economic crime, money laundering and related activities.