Ha Noi, September 27 - 28, 2023, Wildlife Conservation Society, Viet Nam Office (WCS Viet Nam) collaborated with Banking Academy of Vietnam (BAV) to organize a luncheon and a talk show on “Detecting and reporting illegal wildlife trade risks in financial transactions” for financial service providers and BAV’s students.
Overview of the luncheon with financial service providers, Ha Noi, September 2023
The luncheon brought about 30 participants who are representatives of commercial banks in Ha Noi and lecturers of BAV. International experts provided participants with knowledge of illegal wildlife trade (IWT) risk indicators; guidelines to apply IWT red flags in detecting and reporting suspicious financial and banking transactions. During the luncheon, participants and international experts shared their experiences and good practices of reporting IWT-related suspicious activities among banks and non-bank financial institutions. Participants also proposed initiatives to enhance the role of financial institutions in preventing and combating IWT, such as: raising awareness for bank officials on IWT, wildlife identification, establishing a working group with the participation of commercial banks, law enforcement agencies and NGOs, developing and sharing typical cases of handling IWT based on the financial information in Viet Nam.
Mr. Hemanshu Parekh, Executive Director, Financial Crime Surveillance Operations, Thematic & Below the Line testing, Standard Chartered, Ha Noi, September 2023
The talk show attracted the attention of about 40 BAV’s student of 3rd and 4th year of the Faculty of Banking and Faculty of Law. Students were provided with the situation of IWT in Viet Nam and financial risks from the illegal supply chain of wildlife from Africa to Viet Nam as well as from online IWT activities. In this talk show, students were also updated on measures to prevent and combat money laundering risks from IWT that commercial banks apply through sharing of international cases studies and illicit money flows to Viet Nam.
After these events, WCS Viet Nam will continue gathering information and develop IWT red flags in financial and banking transactions that could be shared to law enforcement agencies, financial intelligence units and financial service providers for their appropriate interventions.
The luncheon and talk show were conducted within the framework of the project “Improving the effectiveness of multi-sectoral collaboration in combating illegal wildlife trade from Africa to and within Viet Nam” implemented by GIZ on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the German Federal Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU).