UNDER the State Bank of Pakistan’s regulations of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Combating Financing of Terrorism (CFT), banks and DFIs have been asked to implement periodically Customer Due Diligence (CDD) and Know Your Customer (KYC) on all accounts, basically to ensure the bona fide of a customer.

Recently the Supreme Court of Pakistan has taken up money laundering cases and formed a joint investigation team (JIT) of financial experts to ascertain the gravity of the matter.

The JIT probed and produced before the apex court a list of fictitious accounts in which transactions worth billions of rupees had taken place.

The accounts were mostly found to be of poor people who remained ignorant till the agencies picked them up for interrogation.

The Supreme Court must take into account this aspect and ask banks and DFIs to produce before the JIT all those who are responsible for opening these accounts. It should start legal action against forgery and criminal use of CNICs of these seemingly innocent people.

Asif Ali Khan

Karachi

Published in Dawn, November 12th, 2018