Laws must be entrenched to deal with money laundering in the country – Security Expert

Security Expert Adams Bona has stated that the recent rise in money laundering in the country poses a huge threat to the security of the nation and laws must be entrenched to deal with the situation.

According to Mr Bona, illegal activities seem to be taking a toll on the country and its well being.

In an interview with GhanaWeb’s Amos Ekow Coffie, Mr Bona said the number of crime and violence cases being recorded in the country should be a wake-up call for the country to enforce laws that will address money laundering which is the basis of most illegal activities.

“The reason why this is a big threat to national security is that a lot of countries have been destabilized through the use of money laundering. Ill-gotten monies are laundered, for instance, monies from the sales of the drug, from the sale of illicit firearms, from the sale of anything contraband, and sometimes too any corruption money. If you look at the sub-region ill-gotten money are being used to destabilize the sub-region, for example, Chad, Niger, and the rest. It has huge implications for a country like ours where one can safely say we are not stable.

“There are illicit firearms everywhere in the country, at the moment nine out of every ten violent crimes that are committed in this country are somehow is as a result of the use of small arms and firearms and how do they get into the country? The laws must be entrenched to ban all of these,” he said

Speaking on the implications of dealing with foreign national culprits involved in money laundering, Mr Bona said, the law does not favour anyone and foreign nationals found culpable of this must be dealt with.

“An illegality is illegality, there is nothing like treading cautiously. The reason why you find all these Syrians, Lebanese, Indians, and Nigerians and all these people running into this country to trade in these illicit money laundering here and there are because we don’t have stringent laws, we don’t have stringent regimes, these people are here because the laws are not stringent enough and the enforcement isn’t stringent enough, because you can't say you are a Lebanese, you coming from Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, India and you come here and say if you break the law we shouldn’t punish you because we will be breaching a certain bilateral relation, international relations doesn’t work that way,” he added.

Listen to the full interview below