Prosecutors seconded to the FRC office to Support Serious financial crimes.

On April 10, 2021, representatives from the Attorney General’s office visited the FRC office, upon arrival, the AG office team was received by the FRC team and were given a quick office tour to familiarize the FRC structure and brief each other department’s task assigned. The visiting members with FRC senior executives come together in the FRC meeting room where the business of the day began.
FRC Director Madam Amina, warmly welcomed AG members and briefed the objective of the working lunch by stressing major tasks ahead including the planned Somalia MENA FATF mutual evaluation framework by 2024 and how important is to complete the National Risk Assessment (NRA) and other major FRC milestones.
National Risk Assessment coordinator Mr. Godane took the floor and gave a short verbal presentation to explain the NRA report and its implications, if we do not take it very seriously, He stressed the difficulties FRC have faced during report preparation in collecting good data and continue to face which caused a delay and difficulty in many different facets within NRA stakeholders and how FRC is functioning as a stakeholder to achieve collective goals.
including collecting quality STR, disseminate quality cases to increase the number of successful prosecutions. The collective efforts between the AG/FRC are paramount to combat ML/TF in Somalia and the way forward to prepare for the upcoming MER.
Banking Expert/ mentor Mr. Guleid, in support of NRA Coordinator, acknowledged difficulties faced and how collectively FRC overcomes in collecting reasonable data. He further gave background briefs on issues related to compliance, investigation, and its importance to diligently work with other law enforcement agencies.
Senior Legal Adviser to AG Mr. Hamza took the floor and stressed that in the wake of constant threats of imminent financial crimes, Somalia still lacks volume cases to warrant full-time prosecutors to be seconded at the FRC office. He further emphasized that the implementation of a full-time effective prosecutor’s assignment program to FRC is increasingly an ongoing challenge for the office of Attorney General. Whilst, FRC adopted an enforcement-led approach, which is characterized by the specific human resources to enforcement activities, its more towards capacity building training on law enforcement in the shorter term, He highlighted AG’s willingness to work with FRC and finally agreed to assign two deputy AG to be seconded to the FRC office on a part-time basis, until such time when volume prosecutable cases emerged. In the meantime, FRC assigned Mr. Henry Matson, an experienced investigator from the US Justice Department to provide additional training for all Somalia Law enforcement agencies LAEs in the FRC office.
Deputy AG Mr.Yahya: shared his experience in the court of law by prosecuting financial crimes-related cases, he underscored that the law enforcement required more outreach and training for law enforcement as some of the judges are not even familiar with the term FRC).
The AG team promised to continue coming to FRC three days per week for both training and investigation purposes, FRC will provide selected training contents and schedule to the AG office. The AG team also confirmed their commitment to support FRC values and goals, they appreciated the good working relation with FRC.