FBR filed 115 money laundering complaints by August

ISLAMABAD: In a bid to comply with FATF conditions, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has filed 115 complaints on charges of money laundering worth Rs50 billion under the Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Act 2010 till the end of August 2020.

Pakistan has submitted its updated version of the compliance report for the upcoming face to face virtual meeting of the Joint Working Group (JWG) of FATF review in order to demonstrate that Islamabad made progress on all remaining points of the action plan.

The FATF had declared Pakistan largely compliant on 14 points in the past and now Islamabad submitted its progress report on the remaining 13 points. The FATF’s plenary review meeting is scheduled to be held in Paris next month to take a final decision whether to graduate Islamabad from grey list or to keep it for another extended period.

According to the details submitted for the upcoming face to face joint group online scheduled meeting showed that the FBR’s Directorate Intelligence and Investigation Inland Revenues (IR) so far filed 115 complaints before Customs and IR Judge against 149 accused personswith the involved amount of Rs49.619 billion on charges of money laundering.

“The FBR has attached 198 bank accounts and 25 properties after filing of 115 complaints under AML Act 2010” the official sources said and added that the FBR also recovered Rs6.2 billion from one of a renowned businessman during the tenure of last regime.

Faisalabad is on top on account of filing of money laundering complaints as so far 34 complaints filed by the FBR’s I&I IR, followed by Multan with 28 complaints. The number of filed complaints in Lahore stands at 12, Karachi 13, Islamabad 9, Peshawar 15, Multan 28, Faisalabad 34 and Hyderabad only 4.

The official sources said that the number of registered complaints went up from 24 to 115 in last eight months period as the FBR focused on handling the AML and FATF issues effectively.

The FBR so far received around 400 Suspicious Transaction Reports (STRs) from the Financial Monitoring Unit (FMU) after witnessing unusual banking transactions. However, it required almost two months for FBR officials to accomplish a probe to ascertain whether it falls under charges of money laundering or it will be disposed of for having no solid proof.

In order to strengthen prosecution before court of law, FBR Chairman Javed Ghani has approved in principle for the establishment of a separate Prosecution Wing but there was a need to establish this wing without wasting any time. When contacted to FBR’s Director General (DG) for Directorate of Intelligence and Investigation IR, Dr Bashir Ullah Khan Marwat said that the pace of work against money laundering got the pace in recent months but there was need to establish a separate Prosecution Wing to give this task real hard push in near future ahead.