Nowadays jail term for trade-based money launderers

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Businesspeople will be sentenced to seven years in prison if indeed they make the incorrect declaration on exports, imports and expenditure abroad as the federal government has moved to rein found in trade-based money-laundering, which costs Bangladesh billions of dollars every year.     

The finance ministry issued an order on March 10 to this effect predicated on the FOREX Regulation Act -1947.

The central bank yesterday asked banks to check out the instruction to tackle trade-based money laundering.

The federal government amended the Act in 2015, keeping a provision to punish money launderers.

In line with the Act, the federal government would have to issue a notification to put into action the measure. Within the approach, the ministry has issued the circular.

The provision against the money launderers will be in place until December 2026.

The government is currently drawing up a new law titled "FOREX Management Act." The most recent provision will be contained in the new act.

"We've been requested the government for extended to put into practice the provision of regulations to refrain borrowers from trade-based money-laundering," said Mustafizur Rahman, a good distinguished fellow of the Center for Policy Dialogue.

Although the government has spent six years in issuing the notification after enacting the law, the initiative is time-befitting, he said.

According to the hottest Global Monetary Integrity (GFI) report, 80 per cent of the total funds laundered from Bangladesh was done through over- and under-invoicing.

Bangladesh lost a staggering $7.53 billion normally between 2008 and 2017 to trade mis-invoicing, explained the GFI report.

In the case of over-invoicing, importers present an inflated selling price concealing the genuine value of the imported goods and companies in the industry invoice of the letters of credit (LCs). They don't bring back the amount of money to the united states and invest abroad generally.

Exporters state a lesser price than the actual one at the business invoice of LCs during under-invoicing. They commit misdeeds to launder the amount of money to overseas countries as well.

Money-laundering is facilitated by collusion between importers and exporters, and lender officials are sometimes forced to try illegal transactions, according to a good survey completed by the Bangladesh Institute of Lender Management in 2018.

Misdeclaration of pricing of the imported and exported goods is a good grave concern for the country, the BIBM said.

The institute carried out another study on the problem in 2019 titled "Addressing Trade-based Funds Laundering in Bangladesh: An Assessment."

It said: "Banking institutions should develop data banks independently to prevent vast amounts of dollars from appearing siphoned out of Bangladesh through trade-based funds laundering."

At the same time, banks must have self-initiatives to make data open to other private banks.

The Finance Work 2020-2021 imposed a penalty against launderers, which reaches least twice however, not exceeding four times the tax evaded by giving misdeclaration on exports, imports and investments in other countries.
Source: https://www.thedailystar.net

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