Interpretation
In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires
"accountable person" means any person listed in the Second Schedule to this Act;
"authorised officer" means the Executive Director or Deputy Executive Director of the Financial Intelligence Authority, a prosecutor of the Director of Public Prosecutions, or a police officer of the rank of assistant inspector of police or higher;
"Authority" means the Financial Intelligence Authority established under Part IV;
"bearer negotiable instruments" means monetary instruments in the form of a document such as traveler's checks and negotiable instruments, including checks, promissory notes and payment orders, that are issued to bearer, endorsed unconditionally or issued to a fictitious payee, or in another form that allows the transfer of the right upon delivery, and incomplete instruments including checks, promissory notes, and payment orders that are signed but have the payee's name crossed out or omitted;
"beneficial owner" means the natural person who ultimately owns or controls a customer or the natural person on whose behalf a transaction is conducted, and includes a natural person who exercises ultimate effective control over a legal person or legal arrangement;
"Board" means the Financial Intelligence Authority Board established under Part IV;
"cash" means coins and bank notes of Uganda or of another country that are designated as legal tender and that circulate as and are customarily used and accepted as a medium of exchange in the country of issue;
"competent authority" means investigative, prosecuting, judicial, regulatory or supervisory authorities of the Government of Uganda and includes the Financial Intelligence Authority.
"confiscation", which includes forfeiture where applicable, means the permanent deprivation of property by an order of court;
"court" means the High Court;
"correspondent banking and other similar relationships" means the provision of banking or other similar services by one financial institution to another institution to enable the latter to provide services and products to its own customers;
"crime" means-
any activity that is a crime, offence or violation under the laws of Uganda;
any activity outside the jurisdiction of Uganda which, had it taken place in Uganda, would be a crime, offence or violation under the laws of Uganda.
"currency point" has the value given to it in the First Schedule of this Act in relation to currency point;
"defendant" means a person charged with a crime, whether or not he or she has been convicted, and includes, in the case of a proceeding for a restraining order under sections 71 to 82 , a person who is about to be charged with a crime;
"document" means any record of information and includes-
anything on which there is a writing;
anything on which there are marks, figures, symbols, or perforations having meaning for persons qualified to interpret them;
anything from which sounds, images or writings can be produced, with or without the aid of anything else;
a map, plan, drawing, photograph or similar thing;
an electronic document.
"Financial group" means a group that consists of a parent company or of any other type of legal person exercising control and coordinating functions over the rest of the group for the application of group supervision under the Core Principles, together with branches and/or subsidiaries that are subject to Anti Money Laundering or Countering the Financing of Terrorism policies and procedures at the group level;
"financial institution" means a person who carries on or transacts in the business of a bank or a credit institution, as defined in the Financial Institutions Act, or an insurance company licensed under the Insurance Act;
"freezing" or "seizure" means temporarily prohibiting the transfer, conversion, disposition or movement of property or temporarily assuming custody or control of property on the basis of an order issued by a court;
"gift" means any transfer of property by a person to another person directly or indirectly-
after the commission of a crime;
for a consideration the value of which is significantly less than the value of the consideration provided by the first person; and
to the extent of the difference between the market value of the property transferred and the consideration provided by the transferee;
"gift caught by this Act" means a gift made by the defendant at any time after the commission of the crime, or if more than one, the earliest of crimes, to which the proceedings for the time being relate, and the court considers it appropriate in all circumstances to take the gift into account;
"international organization" means an entity established by formal political agreement between a member State that has the status of an international treaty; its existence is recognised by law in its member country; and it is not treated as resident institutional unit of the countries in which they are located;
"material" means documentary material of any kind and includes information stored in a computer, disc, cassette, or on microfilm, or preserved by any mechanical or electronic device;
"Minister" means the Minister responsible for Finance, Planning and Economic Development;
"monetary instrument"
"monetary transaction" means a transaction that is conducted or concluded using a monetary instrument;
"money laundering" is the process of turning illegitimately obtained property into seemingly legitimate property and it includes concealing or disguising the nature, source, location, disposition or movement of the proceeds of crime and any activity which constitutes a crime under section 116 of this Act;
"occasional transaction" means any transaction that is conducted by any person other than through an account in respect of which the person is a customer;
"payable-through accounts" means correspondent accounts that are used directly by third parties to transact business on their own behalf.
"person" means any natural or legal person or any entity (including any charitable organisation), natural or juridical, including but not limited to a corporation, partnership, trust or estate, joint stock company, association, syndicate, joint venture, or other unincorporated organisation or group, capable of acquiring rights or entering into obligations;
"politically exposed person" means-
an individual who is or has been entrusted with a prominent public function in Uganda or another country, and includes a head of state or head of government, senior politician, senior government official, judicial or military official, senior executive of a state owned corporation, and important party officials; and
a person who is or has been entrusted with a prominent function by an international organization, and includes a member of senior management, director, deputy director or member of a board and includes a related person of the individual;
"proceeds" means any property or economic advantage derived from or obtained, directly or indirectly, through the commission of a crime, and includes property later successively converted, transformed or intermingled, as well as income, capital or other economic gains derived from such property at any time after the commission of the crime;
"property" means assets of every kind whether corporeal or incorporeal, moveable or immoveable, tangible and legal documents or instruments evidencing title to or interest in such assets;
"realisable property" means any property held by a defendant and any property held by a person to whom a defendant has directly or indirectly made a gift caught by this Act;
"realisation" means converting any kind of property into money, such as by sale;
"recognisance" means a bond or obligation, entered into and recorded before a court or magistrate, by which a person engages himself to perform some act or observe some condition such as to appear when called upon, pay a debt or keep the peace;
"record" means any material on which data are recorded or marked and which is capable of being read or understood by a person, computer system or other device;
"related person" means an associate or close relative of the person;
"requesting State" means any State which makes a request under the provisions of Part VI;
"shell bank" means a bank incorporated in a jurisdiction in which it has no physical presence and which is not affiliated with a regulated financial group that is subject to effective consolidated supervision;
"supervisory authority" means a body that regulates or supervises any of the persons and businesses listed in paragraph 14 of the Second Schedule, and who, for the purposes of this Act, shall supervise those persons and businesses in matters relating to anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism;
"suspicious transaction" refers to a transaction which is inconsistent with a customer's known legitimate business or personal activities or with the normal business for that type of account or business relationship, or a complex and unusual transaction or complex or unusual pattern of transaction;
"tainted property" means property used in or in connection with the commission of a crime or constituting the proceeds of crime;
"terrorism financing" means the offence specified in the Anti-Terrorism Act, 2002;
"transaction with no apparent or visible legitimate economic purpose" includes-
a transaction that gives rise to a reasonable suspicion that it may involve the laundering of money or the proceeds of any crime and is made in circumstances of unusual or unjustified complexity;
a transaction whose form or features suggest that it might be intended for an illegal purpose, or the economic purpose of which is not discernible;
a customer-relationship with the financial institution that does not appear to make rational economic sense, e.g., a customer having a large number of accounts with the same bank, frequent transfers between different accounts or inordinately high liquidity;
a transaction in which assets are withdrawn immediately after being deposited, unless the customer's business activities furnish plausible reason for immediate withdrawal;
a transaction that cannot be reconciled with the usual activities of the customer(s) of the financial institution or branch office in question, and in which the reason for the customer's choice of that particular financial institution or branch cannot be ascertained;
a transaction which, without plausible reason, results in the intensive use of what was previously a relatively inactive account, such as a customer's account which shows virtually no normal personal or business related activities but is used to receive or disburse unusually large sums which have no obvious purpose or relationship to the customer or his business;
a transaction which is incompatible with the financial institution's knowledge and experience of the customer in question or with the purpose of the business relationship.
Section analysis Source linked
This section supplies the definitions or statutory meaning governing “Interpretation”.
“In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires "accountable person" means any person listed in the Second Schedule to this Act;”
Use this definition when interpreting other provisions that employ the language addressed by “Interpretation”.
Operative requirements extracted from the consolidated text.
- "authorised officer" means the Executive Director or Deputy Executive Director of the Financial Intelligence Authority, a prosecutor of the Director of Public Prosecutions, or a police officer of the rank of assistant inspector of police or higher;
- "Authority" means the Financial Intelligence Authority established under Part IV;
- "bearer negotiable instruments" means monetary instruments in the form of a document such as traveler's checks and negotiable instruments, including checks, promissory notes and payment orders, that are issued to bearer, endorsed unconditionally or issued to a fictitious payee, or in another form that allows the transfer of the right upon delivery, and incomplete instruments including checks, promissory notes, and payment orders that are signed but have the payee's name crossed out or omitted;
- "beneficial owner" means the natural person who ultimately owns or controls a customer or the natural person on whose behalf a transaction is conducted, and includes a natural person who exercises ultimate effective control over a legal person or legal arrangement;
- "Board" means the Financial Intelligence Authority Board established under Part IV;
- "cash" means coins and bank notes of Uganda or of another country that are designated as legal tender and that circulate as and are customarily used and accepted as a medium of exchange in the country of issue;
- "competent authority" means investigative, prosecuting, judicial, regulatory or supervisory authorities of the Government of Uganda and includes the Financial Intelligence Authority.
- "court" means the High Court;
34 further items remain in the statutory text above.
Express propositions in source-matched passages from judgments citing this section.
Citing judgments are indexed, but no express interpretive proposition has yet passed the passage-verification threshold. Open Judicial treatment for the citing passages.
- [definition of "bearer negotiable instruments" inserted by section 1(a) of Act 3 of 2017]
- [definition of "beneficial owner" substituted by section 1(b) of Act 3 of 2017]
- [definition of "correspondent banking and other similar relationships" inserted by section 1(c) of Act 3 of 2017]
- [definition of "Financial group" inserted by section 1(d) of Act 3 of 2017]
- [definition of "international organization" inserted by section 1(e) of Act 3 of 2017]
- [definition of "monetary instrument" repealed by section 1(f) of Act 3 of 2017]
- [definition of "occasional transaction" amended by section 1(g) of Act 3 of 2017]
- [definition of "politically exposed person" substituted by section 1(h) of Act 3 of 2017]
- [definition of "proceeds" substituted by section 1(i) of Act 3 of 2017]
- [definition of "related person" inserted by section 1(j) of Act 3 of 2017]
- [definition of "shell bank" substituted by section 1(k) of Act 3 of 2017]
- [definition of "supervisory authority" inserted by section 1(l) of Act 3 of 2017]
- [definition of "terrorism financing" inserted by section 1(m) of Act 3 of 2017]
Section-specific consolidation note · Approved