In the wake of money laundering and terrorism financing, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has inaugurated a high-tech data centre which will aid the Financial Monitoring Unit (FMU) in tracking down such cases.
The establishment of the said data centre is in line with the latest developments at the State Bank of Pakistan’s front. The SBP on Friday introduced new stringent rules for banks and other financial institutions against money laundering and terrorism financing.
Under the new rules, the central bank has asked all the banks, development financial institutions (DFI) and micro finance banks (MFB) to keep thoroughly vigilant and continuously monitor their account holders.
What is the FMU?
The Financial Monitoring Unit is an intelligence unit working under the finance ministry. It has been developed in order to fight financial crimes such as money laundering.
The state-of-the-art integrated data centre has been built with the financial aid of UK Department for International Development. It will work through a specialized analytical software suite (goAML) designed by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
Former provincial finance minister, Shabbar Zaidi told that the suspicion of money laundering arises when there is overvaluation of money and the financial transactions do not seem genuine. These factors alert the authorities responsible for tracking money laundering.
Automated Analysis of Transactions
With the advent of the data centre, the FMU will now be able to evaluate laundered money through the automated analysis of suspicious financial transactions; including transactions from banks and big companies. It will aid the FMU to distribute the information about such transactions to different intelligence units and law enforcement agencies.
Abid Qamar, SBP Director explained that the data centre will be able to detect the money laundering being done through formal banking techniques. He also said that the data center wasn’t established to detect money laundering done physically such as the movement of currency notes across different borders of the country.
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Although the span of money laundering cannot be determined right away, Qamar stated:
“We will have sufficient data in terms of the number of suspicious transactions and convictions in due course”
Advantages of the Centre
Before the development of the data centre, data was processed at the FMU manually which was in danger of being overseen or left unnoticed. The processing of data was slow as it was done manually. With the development of the data centre, all these problems will be eradicated as the centre is equipped with the latest technologies and software to aid in the tracking of laundered money.
SBP Governor, Ashraf Mehmood Wathra was accompanied by the British High Commissioner and the UNODC representative at the inauguration.
Source: The News
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