Home>News Center>China | ||
New role helps fight cash launderers
China's central bank said yesterday the nation has been accepted as an observer at the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering, a major intergovernmental organization launched in 1989 by the Group-7 Summit. Observer status marks another step by the nation to step up its international co-operation in combating the threat of money laundering and the funding of terrorism. China is already playing an active role in promoting such co-operation among members of the Euro-Asian Group on Combating Money-Laundry and Financing of Terrorism, the People's Bank of China, the central bank, said at the end of last year. China is a founding member of that group, established in October 2004. Other members include Russia, the Ukraine, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Chinese authorities have been escalating their war on money laundering during the past few years. Money laundering has been seen to be on the rise in China in recent years as crimes such as smuggling and drug-trafficking produce growing amounts of dirty money. The amount of money laundered in the country is estimated at US$20 billion every year. A special bureau has been set up under the central bank. Regulations were also enacted in 2003, requiring banks to report large and suspicious transactions. The campaign has produced some initial results. The central bank spotted suspicious transactions totalling 78 billion yuan (US$9.3 billion) in the first nine months of last year, and transferred 900 cases to police for criminal investigation, earlier reports said. |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||