KARACHI, Jan 17: The Board of directors of the New-York based International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) last week, approved the release of a white paper on anti-money-laundering.

Reports reaching here indicated that IFAC, the worldwide organization for the accountancy profession with membership of 156 professional accountancy bodies in 62 countries (Pakistan included), representing 2.4 million accountants, was urging the world’s accountants to participate in efforts at combating money laundering.

The paper explores the role of all accountants—whether they act as independent auditors, accountants in management positions or in any other professional capacity—in ongoing public and private sector efforts to safeguard against money-laundering. It is also designed to highlight potential indications of money-laundering and to increase awareness of how professional obligations with respect to money-laundering relate to and interact with corruption and transparency, privacy and consumer protection and professional services provided by accountants. The paper draws attention to numerous risks that could lead to or reveal money-laundering situations and provides best practices to help accountants address those risks.

“Until relatively recently, the battle against money-laundering and related financial crime was the exclusive domain of law enforcement,” said IFAC President Aki Fujinuma, and added that approximately 15 years ago, ‘forensic accountants’ started to join forces with law enforcement to contribute their skills in detecting possible money-laundering activity buried in the books and records of victimised financial institutions. “Now, governments and businesses increasingly look to the profession, not just to aid in their monitoring and detection efforts, but also to establish and strengthen controls and safeguards against money-laundering, its perpetrators and their accomplices in organized financial crime,” Fujinuma said.

A partner in one of the large local auditing firm when asked to comment on the IFAC paper on anti-money-laundering said that he had not had the opportunity to go through it all, but observed that the paper was possibly more relevant to the third world countries. He said that it would apply mainly to the accounts of financial institutions, but said that Pakistan’s financial and corporate regulators had already placed numerous reporting and monitoring rules to prevent money-laundering through the banks and financial institutions.

Besides, the collapse of Enron has pushed one of the world’s largest accountancy firms, Anderson to sack one partner and send four others on leave, flashing strong signals to auditing firms all across the world that auditors need to be more careful in ticking figures.