Rwanda: Detailed Assessment Report-Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism

Rwanda has taken considerable steps over the last years to establish a national AML/CFT framework. It enacted, in 2008, the law on prevention and penalizing the crime of money laundering and financing terrorism (Law No. 47/2008 of 09/09/2008, the AML/CFT Law), which sets out the main AML/CFT legal framework, and, in 2011, established a financial intelligence unit (FIU), which became operational shortly before this assessment. The AML/CFT framework remains, however, unfamiliar to most of the relevant authorities and reporting entities, and more efforts should be devoted to raising awareness to the prevention and detection of money laundering and terrorist financing. Rwanda's financial sector is small and mainly dominated by banks. The Rwandan authorities have made great progress in modernizing the financial sector, and aim at making it more attractive to foreign investors. While the risks of money laundering and terrorist financing do not appear to be particularly significant in Rwanda, further action should nevertheless be taken to bolster the legal framework, improve its implementation, strengthen overall supervision of reporting entities within the financial sector, and mitigate the potential domestic and cross-border risks.