The Federal Board of Revenue in a meeting presided by its Chairman Dr Muhammad Irshad on Monday has decided to form Anti-Money laundering (AML) units to probe and prosecute rising crimes of fraud and tax evasion. These AML units will fall under the jurisdiction of the Intelligence and Investigation (I&I) department of Inland Revenue (IR) and will be operational by the end of this month. These units are expected to be launched in seven regional directorates according to I&I Director-General Khawaja Tanveer Ahmed in Lahore, Peshawar, Islamabad, Karachi, Hyderabad, Quetta and Faisalabad
The formation of exclusive police stations at all regional directorates of I&I was also suggested during the meeting. Currently, the help of local police stations is sought by the Directorate General for keeping the accused in custody on remand.
All the AML units will be provided powers under the Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Act 2016. Since June last year, the Financial Monitoring Unit of the State Bank of Pakistan has forwarded reports of 168 fishy transactions to I&I department.
These dedicated AML units will have a director of their own who will be reporting to I&I-IR director general. And this director will be aided by an additional director (headquarters) and three other additional directors in Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar. Besides a number of deputy directors will be chosen as investigating officers in different directorates.
The government has designated the I&I-IR Directorate General in Islamabad as investigating and prosecuting agency within the stipulation of Section 2 (i) of Anti-Money Laundering Act 2010 to enable better and systematic handling of cases of money laundering.
The Anti-Money Laundering Act 2010 in 2016 saw the addition of four offences regarding the evasion of income tax. These include prosecution for false statement in verification where the tax sought to be evaded is Rs10m or more, prosecution for the concealment of income where the tax sought to be evaded is Rs10m or more, prosecution for the improper use of National Tax Number where the tax sought to be evaded is Rs10m or more, and prosecution for abetment where the tax sought to be evaded is Rs10m or more.
