Kazi Zahidul Hasan :
The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has moved forward with plans to crack down on trade-based laundering following reports that an organized crime syndicate was frequently funneling big amounts of money outside the country through legitimate trade transactions.
In line with the plan, NBR will tighten regulatory controls and sharpen enforcement tools to curb the trade-based laundering, officials said.
They said a stricter scrutiny for import-export cargoes has already come in force to check trade-based money laundering.
“Trade-based money laundering has become the most challenging and malevolent forms of money laundering to investigate. So, we are going to set strategies to chase the crime,” NBR Chief Md Nojibur Rahman told The New Nation yesterday.
He said corrupt business curtail frequently exploit global trade systems to move money around the world by presenting complex and confusing documents under legitimate trade transactions sometimes making it difficult to us in tracing the crime.
“NBR has focused on curbing illicit outflow of money through global trade system after it found more than 80 per cent cases of money laundering taking place through this process. It has already unearthed many cases of such crime,” said Md Nojibur Rahman.
The NBR chief mentioned that the Customs Department has already bolstered its supervision capabilities at the country’s prime seaport and also sought cooperation from other regulatory bodies so that it can effectively check the crime.
“We have asked the banks and financial institutions to properly practice due diligence obligations for their customers and to obtain further information to assess the financial crime risks specific at that time of trade finance and transaction,” he added.
“Trade-based money laundering risk is mostly arising from trade finance. So, banks must maintain robust anti-money laundering controls and risk management systems and to mitigate the risk,” said another NBR official, preferring anonymity.
He observed, “Bangladesh has been unsuccessful in preventing trade-based money laundering due to weak enforcement of law and lack of coordination among the regulatory bodies.”
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has identified trade-based money laundering as one of the main channels those criminal organisations and terrorist financiers use to move money throughout the global economy.
The problem is widespread across the Asia-Pacific region where there are high levels of manufacturing, established shipping industries and a number of major financial centres.
