BD not fully ready to fight terror financing, money laundering

Bangladesh lacks basic preparations to fight money laundering and terror financing including removing delays in investigation and completing judgment of cases, according to officials.
Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU) of Bangladesh Bank fails to get necessary information from database of different agencies, and amendments to the company registration procedure and company law are also in the list of weakness.
A high-level meeting of the government last week stressed the need for immediately addressing the issues to fight money laundering and terror financing in Bangladesh, said the officials.
The national coordination committee on anti money laundering (AML) and combating the financing of terrorism (CFT), led by Finance Minister AMA Muhith, at the meeting also asked the agencies concerned to take measures for implementing 31 action items, which are considered crucial to fight the menace.
According to the officials, the national strategic paper (2015-17) on AML and CFT has 138 action items, of which the government has so far implemented 71 completely, 36 partially and 31 were not at any stage of implementation.
The 31 items include some basic tools which are mandatory to fight money laundering and terrorists financing successfully, they said.
The committee asked the agencies concerned to implement the remaining action items within three months until March this year, before preparing a new strategic paper for 2018-2020 period.
Sources said the meeting discussed about formation of a separate attorney service or independent prosecution service to conduct cases countrywide on behalf of the government.
The meeting stressed the need for constituting the body immediately as it was found that the judgment in most cases goes against the interest of the government.
According to officials, Bangladesh is scheduled to submit a progress report on implementation of the action items by January 31 next to the Asia Pacific Group (APG) on Money Laundering.
The next annual meeting of the APG will be held in July when Bangladesh would be put either on 'enhanced follow-up' category or 'regular follow-up' category, based on the progresses to be made by then.
The follow-up process has relevance with the image of the country regarding its endeavour to fight money laundering and terrorists financing, said an official.
Contacted over telephone Thursday, head of the BFIU and deputy governor of Bangladesh Bank Abu Hena Mohd Razee Hassan told the FE that Bangladesh is now under 'enhanced follow-up' category of APG and trying to implement the action items that remained to be done.
He said the 31 action items, which were not implemented at all, will again be included in the strategic paper for 2018-2020.
Asked whether the failure will cast any negative impact on the follow-up process, Mr Hassan said: "If there is improvement in implementation of the action items, none can raise question about it."
"Implementation of some of the basic criteria needs long time. We are working on it," he added.
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