ISLAMABAD, Jan 8: The National Assembly’s standing committee on finance here on Monday proposed to amend the draft of the anti-money laundering bill, seeking full autonomy for special courts to be set up under the act and keeping the bureaucracy’s powers in check.

The committee unanimously opposed the transfer of legislative powers to the federal government that would allow it to amend the law after it was approved by parliament any time through the issuance of a mere ‘notification’.

“We cannot allow anything that is unconstitutional. To give the bureaucracy legislative powers is against the spirit of the Constitution. We don’t want to set a bad precedent,” committee’s chairman Anwar Ali Cheema observed.

Some committee members also opposed the monitoring of the performance of special courts by the federal government as proposed in the draft act. They observed that courts should only be accountable to the judiciary, enabling them to function independently and without any pressure from bureaucracy.

The committee also asked the government to lower the minimum level of punishment proposed in the act from four years of rigorous imprisonment to one year besides calling for increasing the fine from the existing level of only Rs1million to a reasonable level as money laundering could also involve billions of rupees.

State Minister for Finance Omar Ayub Khan gave a detailed presentation on the draft anti-money laundering law. The revised draft is pending for approval of the National Assembly since August 2005 and is likely to be passed soon.

Some members voiced concerns about the role of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in conducting investigations into alleged acts of money laundering by financial organisations and individuals. They said that it was more likely that the government would use the NAB to achieve its political designs and opposed the move, saying there were numerous instances in which the government had used the bureau for securing political objectives in the past.

They suggested a number of amendments to the way investigations would be conducted for ascertaining money laundering to provide proper safeguards to the innocent.

The bill has proposed that the federal government shall, by notification in the official gazette, establish a Financial Monitoring Unit (FMU) which shall be housed in the State Bank of Pakistan and ‘shall be administrated in such a manner as the federal government may direct’.