Thursday, November 22, 2007

Anti-money laundering screws tightened

CHINA / National

Anti-money laundering screws tightened

By Xin Zhiming (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-07-27 06:52

The central bank has directed insurance and securities institutions to
set up an anti-money laundering mechanism this year, and is likely to ask
some non-financial sectors to do the same.

"We need the insurance and securities sectors to set up an (internal) arm
and devise rules against money laundering this year," Tang Xu, head of
the anti-money laundering department of the People's Bank of China
(PBOC), the country's central bank, said during a live Internet
conference yesterday.

This is PBOC's latest move to intensify its fight against money
laundering. Earlier, it ordered the banking industry to devise a system
to monitor and report dubious money flow.

Some specific non-financial institutions such as law and accounting firms
and auction houses are the others that could be directed to set up
similar mechanisms, Tang said.

"We will study these sectors one by one and map out reporting and
inspection regimes for dubious transactions."

Securities and insurance companies will have to send data on dubious
deals to the anti-money laundering monitoring center of the central bank
from October 1, he said.

China intensified efforts to improve its anti-money laundering regime by
passing an anti-money laundering law late last year and issuing rules on
checking the possible flow of funds for terrorists last month.

It has joined hands with the Ministry of Public Security to set up a
network to check the identity of banks' customers. The system went into
force in late June, and all the country's banks have joined it, PBOC
deputy governor Su Ning told a press briefing yesterday.

If a bank official wants to check a customer's identity he just needs to
click a few times for the computerized image of his ID to pop up on the
screen, the PBOC official said.

(China Daily 07/27/2007 page1)

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