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Lanka’s anti-money laundering laws on par with international law :

Authorities lack proper tools

Sri Lanka’s anti-money laundering laws are on par with international law and the only issue is that the compliance officers do not have proper tools and systems to implement them, said SunGard Vice President, Compliance and Financial Crime Solutions Colin Day.


Colin Day

Speaking to Daily News Business he said that money laundering laws cover all financial institutions, not only banks but also bureaus, money transmitters, casinos, insurance, and securities companies.

Sri Lankan banks and financial institutions are rather reluctant to invest in these areas, he said.

Day said that certain laws such as the Terrorist Finance Act, the Money Laundering Act and the Financial Reporting Act are covering all criminal activities. These rules were implemented during the last few years.

Once the anti-money laundering legislation is off the ground, it will block terrorist financing and improve Sri Lankas” image internationally. The Financial Intelligence Unit under the Central Bank of Sri Lanka is also an effective organisation to monitor and detect all these crimes, he said.

Successive Sri Lankan governments have been working with the IMF to develop legislation to block money laundering activities for some years now. Further, the International Action Task Force is a global body spearheading anti-money laundering laws and Sri Lanka is one of the members of that body.

This will enable to address this global issue well, Day said. The Government’s timely action to bring a piece of legislation in regard to money laundering will be able to combat this global issue. The UK laws are also quite similar to Sri Lankan laws on anti-money laundering but the absence of tools, systems and the bandwidth has lost the confidence on the system, he said.

He said that developed countries, especially the US and the UK are pushing for anti-money laundering laws in countries around the world, to block money laundering networks as part of its war against terrorism, because terrorists and organised criminal groups exploit weaknesses in financial systems to legitimise and clean such illegal or dirty money, he said.

He said that the US Treasury fined the UK based finical entity Lloyds TSV passing payment instructions and information where countries had been sanctioned by USA. This has resulted in the reputation and financial loss to the company.

He also said that currently, all international banks operating in Sri Lanka already have the required systems in place to detect suspicious cash inflows.

If Sri Lanka is perceived as having weak anti-money laundering procedures, criminal funds could find their way into the Sri Lankan financial system, he said. SunGard is a UK based company providing IT services, infrastructure and software processing solutions for business organizations.

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