Bangladesh has got one more year to meet conditions of Asia Pacific Group on anti-money laundering as well as to upgrade its related laws including that of terrorist financing.
APG decided to submit mutual evaluation report on Bangladesh’s anti-money laundering activities in February 2016 instead of February 2015, said Dr Aslam Alam, Secretary to Bank and Financial Institutions Division.
“APG on Money Laundering agreed at the 17th APG annual meeting and technical assistance forum this month (July) in Macao, China that it will submit the mutual evaluation report in the 2016 annual meeting,” he told Dhaka Tribune.
Bangladesh has offered APG to hold the 2016 annual meeting in Dhaka when the APG is supposed to submit its mutual evaluation report on anti-money laundering efforts of Bangladesh, said Dr Aslam.
“It will be easy for us to endorse APG mutual evaluation report at an annual meeting in Dhaka,” the secretary said.
In February 2014, Bangladesh successfully came out of the gray list of Paris-based International organisation Financial Action Task-Force (FATF) which said the country made “significant progress in its drives against money laundering and combating terror financing” in the past five years.
Secretary said, “We badly needed time to implement at least 40 conditions of APG which were placed just after Bangladesh came out from FATF gray list in February. So it was not possible to meet all the conditions only in a year time.”
A team of APG on Money Laundering will visit Dhaka at the end of November 2014 to oversee execution of 40 APG recommendations including upgrading of anti-money laundering and terrorist financing law and Mutual Evaluation law.
Under the Mutual Evaluation law, the two countries will exchange money laundering information and the persons involved in the crime.
The government will have to look into the nine issues under the FATF for prevention of the money laundering.
They include evaluation of existing legal review, anti-money laundering law, investigation and judicial process, terrorist financing law, implementation of UN resolution, international cooperation and mutual legal assistance, supervision and monitoring, NGO-related matters, cross border issues and matters related with formation of companies and beneficiary owners.
Meanwhile, Secretary M Aslam Alam recently expressed his concerns over the possibility of money laundering in the share market.
He came up with the concerns at a post-budget meeting between Finance Minister AMA Muhith and the stock exchanges at the secretariat.
He said they had worked hard for last five years to pull the country out of the FATF gray list and was successful in February.
