Thirty-four judges from six provinces are now better equipped to deal with financial crimes in their courts after receiving training from some of the most experienced financial crimes trainers in the United States.

From November 19 to 20, 2008, the U.S. Treasury Department, in partnership with the USAID, recruited 34 judges—including three women judges—from Kabul, Kapisa, Kunduz, Laghman, Nangarhar, and Wardak provinces for the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Investigative Techniques (FIT) training program. The FIT program for judges, which was offered separately during the same week to Afghan prosecutors and investors, included lectures on money laundering, corruption, terrorist financing, asset forfeiture, and Afghanistan’s own anti-money laundering laws.

Richard N. Seaman, the U.S. Treasury’s regional financial enforcement advisor for Europe and Asia, said he hopes the FIT training “will raise [the judges’] awareness of—and sensitivity to—various types of financial crimes.” Once the FIT graduates return to their courts, Seaman said he hopes that “investigators and prosecutors will ultimately be more confident that financial crimes cases they prepare will more likely end with fair and successful dispositions when those cases are presented at trial before these judges.”

USAID supported the U.S. Treasury’s training efforts by working with the Supreme Court to recruit judges from the criminal and public security divisions of primary and appeals courts. For two days prior to the FIT program training, USAID’s rule of law project held a preparatory, two-day training on special criminal laws. In the preparatory training, judges reviewed Afghanistan’s Anti-Money Laundering and Proceeds of Crime Law (2004), the Afghanistan Law on Combating the Financing of Terrorism (2004), the Counter Narcotics Law (2005), the Law on Crimes against Internal and External Security (1987), and the Law on Implementation of Anti-Corruption Strategy (2008).  

At the FIT program’s closing ceremony, Supreme Court Justice Abdul Rashed Rashid, who heads the court’s public security division, said the program was “extremely helpful” and thanked the U.S. Department of Treasury and USAID for their support. “These subjects…will be very useful and help us succeed,” he said. “Afghanistan really needs this kind of help and your understanding of legal education [needs]…and I appreciate that.”