September 15, 2007	Saturday	Ramazan 2, 1428

ISLAMABAD, Sept 14: The Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency has urged the National Assembly to delete the provisions of establishing anti-money laundering special courts under the law as it amounts to establishing a parallel judiciary.

The system of special courts for anti-money laundering crimes did not work in India when it was introduced in 2002, said the legislative brief of Pildat, an NGO, on Friday.

The government promulgated the law through a presidential ordinance on Sunday.

The NGO has demanded of the National Assembly and its standing committee on finance to shun the legislative lethargy and pass the law through an act of parliament pending with it for the last two years.

The bill gives the executive--the government-- the arbitrary power to add any offence to the schedule of predicate offences attached to the bill.

PILDAT has demanded that this power be subjected to a legislative review.

While launching the brief on the Anti-Money Laundering Bill, 2005, the NGO noted that the bill was introduced in the National Assembly on Sept 22, 2005, and the NA standing committee was supposed to submit its report to the National Assembly in October 2005, but it was done despite a lapse of two years.

Both India and Bangladesh enacted their money laundering prevention laws in 2002.