ISLAMABAD: The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) of Pakistan has announced Friday it will expand its anti-money laundering surveillance scope down to provinces as it establishes special desk in the headquarters, ARY News reported.
To this effect, the FIA has signed a memorandum of understanding with the police forces of Sindh and Punjab provinces wherein it is pledged that all the state institutions will facilitate FIA’s Anti Money Laundering unit as it investigates laundering bids.
With this development today, the money laundering cases will be transferred to FIA under Money Laundering Act while the police will continue to investigate the aspects of criminality in them.
The MoU today underlined that from this point onwards, the FIA directors and police additional IGs will stay in contact to dissect such cases that will involve shared responsibility.
With FIA now on the scene across provincial jurisdictions, it will help police resolve cases that deal with money trails while police will continue to investigate the crime as it stands.
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It may be noted that before this MoU, the FIA was limited to dealing with federal-level cases and the cooperation between police and anti-money laundering unit was rare to which the police said it often required anti-money laundering act.
The counter-terrorism department of police, they said, has frequently booked cases under money laundering sections but the absence of amendments in the Police Act hampered investigations and limited police authority.
However, with this development, police and FIA will deal cases entailing money laundering with shared responsibility while all the regulatory bodies and state institutions will cooperate with them when necessary.
