The Algerian legal system has been brought into line with international treaties and agreements relating to money laundering. It was at the initiative of Algeria that the UN adopted in 2014 a resolution criminalizing the payment of ransoms to terrorist groups.
Algeria is today legally well equipped to fight against terrorism and money laundering. The first president of the Supreme Court, Taher Mamouni, says it clearly by assuring that the legislation dedicated to combating these two cross-border scourges has been updated and adapted to the international conventions and agreements ratified by Algeria.
In a speech made at the opening, on Thursday, April 27 in Blida, of a “study day on money laundering, the financing of terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction”, Mr. Mamouni highlighted the emphasis on all that has been made by the State as efforts in the fight against the terrorist hydra and its sources of financing.
“Algeria is a pioneering country in terms of the promulgation of legislation to combat the crimes of money laundering and the financing of terrorism”, underlines the first president of the Supreme Court, whose intervention was taken up by the APS.
On the strength of its long experience in the fight against terrorism, which it has waged without respite since the beginning of the 1990s, Algeria has considerably enriched, over the years, its legal arsenal in order not only to better combat this planetary scourge but also to dry up its sources of financing and neutralize any sponsor or support lurking in the shadows.
“The Algerian legislator has endeavored to reform the legal system in line with the treaties and ratified agreements, and this, to consolidate the effective protection of the national economy and financial institutions against the risks of these dangerous crimes”, affirms Mr. Mamouni, while specifying that the latest adjustments made to Law No. 05-01 relating to the prevention and fight against money laundering and the financing of terrorism aim to “monitor the evolution of these crimes through the control and early prevention”.
Indeed, Law No. 23-01 of February 7, 2023, amending and supplementing Law No. 05-01 defines the responsibility and obligations of stakeholders in the operation to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing crimes. as well as their role in taking the necessary steps to identify and assess threats.
The new law provides for “the reporting, to the competent authorities, including the financial intelligence unit, of suspicious transactions guaranteeing the protection of whistleblowers from any prosecution against them”, recalls the first president of the Supreme Court, according to which the strengthening of the legal framework aims above all to put an end to the financing of terrorism through increasingly complex and difficult to detect money laundering networks. For Mr. Mamouni, these networks are “the main source on which terrorist organizations rely to ensure their longevity”.
The payment of the ransom criminalized
There can therefore be no effective fight against terrorism without the drying up of the sources of its financing. One of the means used to finance terrorism is kidnapping for ransom. A scourge that Algeria has vigorously fought at the national, regional and international levels.
It is moreover at the initiative of Algeria that the United Nations (UN) adopted, in 2014, a resolution criminalizing the payment of ransoms to terrorist groups. In its resolution, the UN Security Council had called on all Member States to ensure that “the provision or collection of funds, financial property or economic or financial resources and other services with the intention of using them for terrorist activities”.
The Security Council had expressed in this wake its “concern” about “the multiplication of kidnappings and hostage-taking carried out by terrorist groups in order to raise funds or obtain political concessions”.
In an investigation published in July 2014, the prestigious newspaper The New York Times revealed large amounts paid as ransoms by European governments against the release of their nationals taken hostage by terrorist groups.
This same American media indicated that France alone would have paid, from 2008 to 2014, nearly 60 million dollars in ransom to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in return for the release of several French people kidnapped in the Sahel. A good financial cushion would have allowed this terrorist organization to extend its criminal operations to West Africa.
Speaking at the same event, the Attorney General at the Court of Blida, Abdelmadjid Djebari, for his part insisted on “the protection of the national economy and the financial and banking systems while being in tune with the news in this area “.
According to him, the scourge of money laundering, which is the action of concealing the provenance of illegally acquired money by converting it into a legitimate source, constitutes a “hard blow for the national economy”. It is for this reason that the Algerian legislator, he specifies, has ensured that the legal texts are adapted to the evolution of this transnational scourge.
Thus, the new text adopted last February provides, among other things, for a series of “administrative sanctions imposed on financial companies, institutions and non-financial professions, such as lawyers, notaries, auctioneers, managers or their assistants, in the event of a breach of the obligations assigned to them and obliges them to report to the specialized body any suspicious transaction” of money laundering.
