NA body defers approval of Anti Money Laundering Bill

ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Finance has deferred approval of Anti Money Laundering (AML) (Second Amendment) Bill because of stiff resistance by opposition benches.

The NA panel held its meeting under chairmanship of Jamil Ahmed Khan because of absence of committee Chairman Faizullah Khan here at Parliament House on Friday. The meeting considered approval of three laws to comply with the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) including Limited Liability Partnership Amendment Bill 2020, Companies Amendment Bill 2020, and Anti-Money Laundering (Second Amendment) Bill, 2020. Two bills were approved but the AML Second Amendment Bill was again deferred.

Adviser to Prime Minister on Finance Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh appeared before the committee first time and stated that everyone wanted the country to be removed from the grey list of the FATF and the government had also been trying to comply with the FATF action plan. He said Pakistan has so far completed 14 action plans and 13 were yet to be completed.

Pakistan, he said, was not able to increase its export and foreign direct investment as well as improve living standard of the people. Some members of the committee were surprised over t the urgency shown by the government for approval of the proposed laws arguing that they could not approve bills in haste.

Naveed Qamar, Nafisa Shah as well as Ali Pervez and Ayesha Ghaus Pasha stated that approval of the law in the present form would be catastrophic for the economy and businesses, and on top of that the opposition wanted exclusion of National Accountability Bureau (NAB) role.

Both treasury and the opposition members have also expressed serious concern over proposed customer due diligence (CDD) and had strong objection to it.

Although the secretary finance stated that Pakistan had been at a very precarious situation in terms of the FATF grey list, and had been doing all this to get the country removed from it, Aisha Ghaus Pasha was of the view that the government had been “crushing economic activity through such laws”.

The director general of Financial Management Unit (FMU) briefed the committee about the salient features of the AML (Second Amendment) Bill, 2020, required to fulfil the recommendations made by the FATF.

The opposition members objected over certain restrictions on jewellers on recommendation of the FATF and stayed that the government should not accept such conditions under which businesses could not comply. They were of the view that purchasing of jewellery of over Rs2 million would be bound to be registered and this limit should be jacked up. Despite assurance of government, the members did not approve AML Amendment Bill 2020 and deferred it.