Finnish Ambassador Deeply Concerned By Financial Intelligence Centre Report

The Finnish Ambassador to Zambia has said that revelations in the 2017 Financial Intelligence Centre report on Zambia are highly alarming.

He has commended the FIC for bringing to light the gross misuse of public resources, tax evasion and corruption. He has said that from a governance point of view the way in which the revelations were made is less important than what these revelations show us.

Mr. Olkkonen stated that that if there is evidence of misuse of public funds or tax evasion, these crimes need to be followed up regardless of the process of how they were made public.

Meanwhile, on assessing the implications of the FIC report to foreign investments, Economist Chibamba Kanyama told QFM News said that foreign portfolio investors generally want to invest their money in countries where financial systems are secure and most of them have invested their money in Zambia because of their confidence in financial systems such as the Bank of Zambia Anti-money laundering monitoring system.

When information such as the FIC report is released,an investor’s first reaction is to assess whether their money could be caught up in some of the channels they have invested such as the commercial banks. As such, information released by FIC gets monitored by investors as well. Mr. Kanyama said investors have a right to know what is going on in a country in which they have invested, whether good or bad and make decisions based on the available information.