ISLAMABAD: Under the Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Law, the tax officials have lodged 215 FIRs totaling Rs235 billion in the previous four years.
This was discovered at a meeting of the National Assembly Standing Committee on Finance, which was held on Wednesday at Parliament House under the leadership of Faiz Ullah.
During the discussion, MPs enquired about the convictions in a court of law under AML to satisfy the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), to which the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) high-ups responded that the first conviction was obtained in a Peshawar-based case involving Inland Revenue.
To enforce [the] AML Law, we have lodged a total of 215 FIRs against 267 accused people and attached assets worth Rs235 billion, with a tax amount of Rs76 billion involved.
640 bank accounts were also attached by the FBR. After receiving and analyzing data from the relevant eight to nine agencies, the Financial Monitoring Unit (FMU) sent us suspicious transaction reports (STRs), and the FBR cannot close an investigation on its own, according to FBR’s director general (DG) Intelligence and Investigation of Inland Revenue (IR) Aamir Talpur.
However, no convictions have been obtained on the Customs side so far. PML-N leader Ahsan Iqbal said that the rules were rushed because the AML Law was enacted to target Mian Nawaz Sharif but is now being used to harass the country’s companies.
Faiz Ullah addressed the concerns of the Faisalabad business community over the prevalent usage of AML rules against them, arguing that tax evasion and money laundering should be dealt with separately.
Dr. Ashfaque Ahmed, head of the FBR, recalled that the AML Law had been enacted by Parliament and that tax evasion involving criminal profits had been transferred to the authority of the tax machinery.
Despite labor shortages, he added, the tax board had to act unwillingly in line with the mandate provided by Parliament by making it a law of the nation.
According to Aamir Talpur, the FMU was the major central point for receiving all types of data, and after analyzing it, they created suspicious transaction reports and sent them to the appropriate law-enforcement organizations.
In the event of tax-related issues such as income tax or sales tax, these STRs were submitted to the FBR’s Inland Revenues, and in the case of Customs, they were forwarded to the FBR’s Customs Intelligence Wing.
Talpur gave the example of an 80-year-old man who deposited millions of rupees in cash but recorded just Rs0.2 million in taxable income.
The FBR could not declare someone innocent since they were compelled to gather evidence and present it in a court of law. He went on to say that the homes and bank accounts were then attached.
The Federal Government Properties Management Bill 2021 was also submitted to the committee by the Ministry of Finance.
PPP MNA Dr. Nafisa Shah and PML-N MNA Ahsan Iqbal were passionately opposed, arguing that it will open a new Pandora’s Box. They requested that the perspectives of significant stakeholders such as railroads, defense, ports and shipping, and others be included since no ministries or departments would be ready to give up their holdings to the newly constituted body.
The new draught proposes the creation of the Property Management Authority, which would operate for three years under the supervision of the director-general (DG).
Then, a board will be formed, and this authority will be tasked with developing commercial assets. It will be able to mortgage, rent, or lease government-owned property. The committee, however, postponed its approval until the following meeting.
Dr Nafisa Shah of the PPP requested that specifics of the Saudi loan deposit and oil facility of $4.2 billion for a year be provided at the next meeting, and the director-general of the Ministry of Finance sought an in-camera session to provide details of the Saudi arrangement.