CBI: New procedures to combat money laundering and terrorist financing

Baghdad-INA
 
The Central Bank of Iraq (CBI) unveiled On Friday ,its measures to combat money-laundering and terrorist financing, confirming that it has also issued binding resolutions in this regard.
 
The representative of the Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Office at CBI, Hussein Al-Mukarram, told the Iraqi News Agency (INA), that "Iraq's procedures regarding combating money laundering and terrorist financing are represented in the issuance of the Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Law No. 39 of 2015 and many regulations, instructions and controls Circulars and guidelines in particular, all of which have been issued in light of international requirements and standards and in compliance with local requirements.”
He stressed that "there are decisions that included obligating all financial institutions to form departments to report suspicious financial transactions and give them independence in their tasks, and to prepare a guide for policies and procedures to combat money laundering and terrorist financing in light of which work is carried out and to be available to all employees of financial institutions."
 
Al-Mukarram added, "The procedures also included obligating financial institutions to acquire electronic systems to combat money laundering and terrorist financing for the purpose of extrapolating the monitoring of suspicious financial operations and reporting them to the Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Office," noting that "Iraq is committed to all international requirements to combat money laundering and terrorist financing issued by the y the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), in addition to completing the conditions for joining the Egmont Group.”
 
He pointed out that "Many specialized training courses have been held in combating money laundering and terrorist financing, combating financial crimes, penalties and bans, and employees of banking and non-banking financial institutions have been involved in them."
He explained that "All the followed procedures resulted in an increase in the number of suspicious financial transactions received by the office from various parties obligated to report, which resulted in an increase in the reports submitted by the office to the Public Prosecution Office to take the necessary action, and amounted to (15-25-34-24-39) reports during the years (2017 and 2021) respectively, and each report includes a number of reports on a number of companies and people, and this increase was reflected in the issuance of a large number of convictions by the competent courts.”
 
He stressed that "the increase in the referred reports is a result of the measures taken to encourage financial institutions to report suspicious transactions and exchange information with law enforcement agencies, which contributed to the completion of the analysis of those transactions and the identification of suspicions of money laundering and terrorist financing."