Govt to amend Money Laundering Act 2002

Steps would be taken to amend the Money Laundering Prevention Act 2002 in the next parliament session, said Finance Minister AMA Muhith yesterday.
Very little progress has been achieved so far as regards bringing back the laundered money as only one money laundering case could be filed against the opposition leader Khaleda Zia's youngest son Arafat Rahman Koko, said the minister while talking to the journalists after a meeting with revenue officials at Chittagong Circuit House yesterday.
Muhith said it's because the disclosure rules render accessing necessary information to prove laundering very difficult.
Filing several more cases in connection with money laundering, however, is under process, disclosed the minister who also thought the amount of laundered money would be higher than what could be detected so far.
The minister expressed satisfaction over the collected revenues, which surpassed the target and said the government was trying to increase revenue earnings further to facilitate development activities.
Putting emphasis on increasing manpower in the revenue sector, the minister said recruitment of personnel for customs, VAT and income tax departments is being processed following procedures and maintaining transparency, which might take some time.
The minister also said they would rethink the issue of re-designating superintendent of preventive services and customs appraisers as revenue officers and assistant customs officers as it occasioned discontent among the latter.
Earlier, in the meeting with the revenue officers, the minister discussed thoroughly various problems and limitations faced as well as the ways and means to overcome those.
The revenue officers presented before the minister the scenarios of revenue collection and highlighted the need for increasing manpower and speeding up the process of bringing together the export and import divisions of Chittagong Customs House under the envisaged reforms.
Revenue collections by the Customs House, Customs Excise and VAT and Bond Commissionerate crossed the targets set for the last financial year, they reiterated.
Chittagong Customs House collected revenue of Tk 16,803 crore against the target of Tk 16,695 crore, Customs Exercise and VAT in Chittagong collected Tk 2,932 crore against targeted revenue of Tk 2,750 while Bond Commissionerate earned Tk 288 crore against the targeted amount of Tk 279 crore, the elaborations said.
During the period, increased imports also helped Chittagong Port Authority to earn around Tk 1,000 crore, which was around Tk 100 crore more than what had been bagged in the previous fiscal year, sources said.
The three circles of income-tax department in Chittagong together collected Tk 2,682 crore comprising around 20 percent of Tk 16,560 crore which was the total income-tax collected in 2009-2010 fiscal year, said concerned sources.