MULTAN: Directorate of Customs Intelligence and Investigation vigorously functioning for the prevention of money laundering and combating the finance of terrorism in the jurisdiction.
These views were expressed by Deputy Director Navee-Ur-Rehman Bughvi during an exclusively interview with Customs Today regarding anti-money laundering actions.
He said that in the wake of the FATF action plan for Pakistan, he said, the Customs Intelligence had a huge challenge to respond to. On the one hand, he said, there was pressing need to demonstrate an increase in money-laundering investigations and prosecutions in line with Pakistan’s risk profile, including cases involving foreign proceeds, stand-alone money-laundering cases and cases involving legal persons, and to also demonstrate that LEAs were continuing to restrain and confiscate criminal proceeds for high-risk crimes, including working with foreign counterparts to trace, freeze and confiscate assets.
On the other hand, he said, there was also a daunting task of intuitional capacity building of the field units and investigators to understand the legal, administrative and international dimensions of money-laundering investigations, and to equip them with the necessary skills and tools to come up to the challenge.
Naveed said that Customs undertook major initiatives to build organizational capacity for effective money-laundering investigations, prosecutions and convictions. Directorate of Customs Intelligence and Investigation developed a risk-based approach identifying high-risk crimes where the agency needed to focus. Then, the establishment of a dedicated Anti Money Laundering (AML) Directorate was conceived and approved with the first tranche of Rs534 million. It is still in its take-off stage.
Likewise, a data center was established at the FIA headquarters for information-sharing among the relevant stakeholders along with Customs — national and international. A working liaison was established with the counterparts across the world. Directorate of Customs Intelligence is taking action against money launderers on the basis of source information and effective monitoring.
A Directorate of Intelligence and Investigation (Customs) Rawalpindi team arrested an accused namely Zahid Miraj from Islamabad airport on his arrival from Flight No ER724 from Dubai and accused was nominated in FIR No. 01/2021 registered under Anti-Money Laundering Act 2020 for his involvement in money laundering under the garb of gold exports. He was nominated in the FIR along with nine other accused for their involvement in money laundering to the tune of US $ 16.1 million to the UAE.
Customs Investigators were also able to solve complex cases where organisations and individuals were involved and the proceeds of crimes were parked outside the country. Moreover, prosecutions and convictions also saw at least an increase by 100 percent.
Deputy Director Naveed-ur-Rehman said that Customs was Pakistan’s focal point in the campaign against money-laundering and Directorate of Customs Intelligence was determined to carry out this fight till the country is not only taken out of FATF grey list but also beyond.
