Luanda Leaks: more than a scandal a unique opportunity to reinforce the role of Compliance

The most recent financial scandal known as “Luanda Leaks”, showed us many different things, made us think about the way business with Angola was done, showed us that from the political rulers to the financial institutions, all  knew the real origin of the funds but kept its eyes closed to the evidences; also exposed the way how some African ruling elite’s keeps exploiting their own people and, last but not least, the role played by all sorts of counselors and consultants in the whole process.

We must point that this gigantic laundry is not a recent phenomenon but happened throughout decades, shortly after the end of the Angolan civil war on the late XX century and had his peak in the period of the Portuguese financial crisis when the country had a huge need of capitals and opened its doors to Mrs. Dos Santos-Dukolo’s investments on the financial and several other strategic sectors knowing the real origin of those capitals

Besides the astonishing example of collective amnesia, hypocrisy and cynicism from current and former business partners, associates, counselors and politicians, who either deny having ever known the origin of the funds or even hurried to cease relations with Mrs. Dos Santos-Dukolo, this case must be seen as an unique opportunity to look at Compliance in a serious way and once and for all stop seeing it as a burden for business, something imposed by the global legal and regulatory framework that must be accomplished, preferrably on a mere formal way, through well designed and "taylor made" programas but without the proper means, namely  adequate and qualified human resources, proper and modern IT tools assure to screen, monitor and control the flows of funds, to perform the KYC due diligences, to identity the Political Exposed Persons and so on.

At this stage the puropose is not to point the finger or even to blame those individuals and institutions which were not able to accomplish theirs duties and task and did not  act as promptly and strongly as they should and let “business be made as usual", that is the regulators and prosecutors competence. The goal is other, is to give a small and unpretentious contribute to highlight the need to reinforce and invest in Compliance effectively, ending the kind of "fairy tail" way to deal with this matters.

We hope that this lesson has been duly learned and from now on, Compliance will be definitely seen as an indispensable defense tool against financial and other types of criminality, with proper financial means, adequate and well trained human resources and effective IT tools to prevent new “Luanda” or other similar leaks.

Disclaimer: This text expresses a personal view and can in no way be linked, associated or connected with the author’s current employer