FATF warns Nepal of blacklisting
KATHMANDU,JAN 24:
Financial Action Task Force (FATF) — a global anti-money laundering agency — has warned Nepal to implement its commitments in fighting against the flow of dirty money or will be black listed.
During a meeting of FATF/Asia-Pacific Regional Review group’s face-to-face meeting last week, the global body has threatened Nepal to black list, after the country failed to fulfil its past promises on deadline.
Nepal had promised to update the Acts and laws against the flow of dirty money and ratify remaining two UN conventions — Mutual Legal Assistance Bill and Extradition Bill that are still in the parliament — by the end of 2011, but could not walk the talk forcing the regional meeting to propose some two dozen reforms.
“The meeting proposed some 22 reforms, but we agreed on three reforms — legal reform, strengthening of Financial Information Unit (FIU) under the central bank and strengthening of banking reports — for the time being as the country is passing through a transition phase,” according a participants at the meeting that took place in Sydney, Australia.
Nepal — led by secretary at the Prime Minister’s Office Trilochan Uprety — has presented its progress report in the meeting. Central bank deputy governor Maha Prasad Adhikari, secretary at the Ministry of Law Bhesraj Sharma, three joint secretaries of the Finance Ministry and FIU’s deputy director Hari Prasad Nepal took part in the meeting. Out of the four conventions prescribed by the global anti-money laundering agency, the parliament has already ratified two UN Conventions — International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism-1999 and UN Convention Against Transnational Organised Crime — in June, 2011.
The FATF Plenary and Working Group Meetings on October 24-28, 2011 in Paris, France had broadly discussed on July, 2011’s 14th annual meeting of Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering report and forwarded the progress report to the FATF plenary for further discussions.
Source: THT
