THE government's formation of a 10-member high-powered committee styled as National Committee on Anti-money Laundering -- Combating Terrorist Financing reflects its desire to provide an organised basis to the fight against illegal international monetary transactions and financing of terrorist networks. So far as we understand, the national committee will principally act as a policy-making body while a working committee consisting of representatives from the similar ministries and bodies as are represented on the NC will assist the latter on the implementation side. Additionally, the new body is to help recover money stashed away abroad. There are thus three functions before the committees: one, combating money laundering; two, fighting terror financing; and three, bringing back unearned incomes of Bangladeshi citizens kept in foreign financial institutions.
The new arrangements envisage a committee within a committee -- rather a wheel within a wheel. That way there is a built-in element of coordination between the two committees. So far so good, but what we believe to be necessary is to have a nodal agency or a taskforce looking into terror financing as an integral part of the counter terrorism strategy. The committee set-up being torn between three agendas there is likely to be a diffusion of focus on terrorist funding. That's why we are asking for a separate agency to look into the phenomenon of financing terrorism.
Let's not forget that while changes in the anti-money laundering act have been followed by remittances soaring through the formal banking channels those by themselves may not prove enough to checkmate clandestine use of money by extremist quarters. We have heard allegations of outlawed extremist groups operating under different labels and some NGOs and banks linked to suspicious banking operations with Bangladesh Bank looking into them. They are yet to be extricated from the oxygen of support they receive from recalcitrant quarters as is evidenced by the discovery of grenades and arms caches.
The anti-money laundering thrust is understandable though, as the money transacted through informal channels like hundi that is not recorded through the banking system is susceptible to use for subversive activities including trafficking in weapons and terrorist activities. While the national committee addresses the question of collaborating with foreign governments and international financial institutions and banks to secure their cooperation in fighting money laundering and flight of capital, a special cell is needed to tackle terror financing in a focused and intensive way.
http://www.thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=25361
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