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BB spots rising shady transactions

Sajjadur Rahman
Bangladesh Bank (BB) received 466 suspicious transaction reports (STR) in fiscal year 2007-08, a 412 percent rise from 91 cases reported in previous fiscal, BB officials said.
STRs filed with the BB were 102 in fiscal 2005-06.
Some 25 commercial banks, mostly private, have been penalised for the transactions as those violated the Money Laundering Prevention Act 2002. The num ber of the punished banks was 17 in 2006-07 and 14in2005-06.
“Banks, which earlier tried to conceal this type of reports, now send those to BB for the latter's strict vigilance to combat money laundering," a senior BB official said, requesting not to be named.
According to officials, BB has punished most of the responsible banks with cash. Considering the gravity of the cases, the central bank can also ask banks to suspend their officials responsible for the transactions. The central bank can also file cases against a bank.
The BB is empowered to deal with the issue under the Money Laundering Prevention Act 2002 and Money Laundering Prevention Ordinance 2008.
Bangladesh has also adopted AntiTerrorist Ordinance 2008 that empowered the BB to detect and prevent terror financing and take necessary measures so banking channels cannot be misused for financing terrorism.
To combat money laundering, the central bank in April 2006 made it mandatory for
commercial banks to report all cash transactions up to Tk 5 lakh in any account in a single day to the Financial Intelligence Unit of BB. Later in September 2007, the BB revised the cash transaction limit at Tk 7 lakh at a time.
The centra) bank said all documents pertaining to complex and unusual large transactions and all unusual patterns of transactions having no apparent economic and lawful purpose should be examined and the findings should be properly recorded and accordingly sent those to the BB.
"The number of suspicious transaction reports has increased because the central bank does not take stern actions against the
responsible banks,” a managing director of a private commercial banksaid.
Earlier, in 2006 the central bank fined the country's top Shariah-based commercial bank, Island Bank, with Tk 1 lakh for transactions linked with Islamist militants. This was the first penalty of such kind in Bangladesh.
He however said inclusion of pay order transactions might have caused the dramatic rise of the reported cases.
Earlier, the Bangladesh Bank-developed software had no option for including transactions against pay order.
sajjad@thedailystar.net