ISLAMABAD: Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan directed the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on Monday to immediately launch a crackdown on Hawala/Hundi (transfer of money through illegal channels) and keep a strict watch on suspicious transactions to curb terror funding.
“There is a need to utilise all resources to bring about a discernible change in its (FIA) performance,” he said at a meeting on FIA’s new initiatives, vision and targets for the current year.
He said the FIA would be transformed into the country’s premier investigative agency. Under the National Action Plan (NAP) against terrorism and extremism, he said, the FIA in collaboration with the finance ministry’s financial monitoring unit had been tasked to play a lead role in tracking all suspicious and illegal transactions to curb terrorist financing.
The minister was informed that since the formulation of NAP as part of the financial monitoring mechanism of FIA, 18 cases of Hawala/Hundi had been detected. Twenty-four accused were arrested and an amount of Rs71.5 million was recovered.
Similarly, three cases of suspicious transaction and five of money-laundering were detected and eight accused arrested.
The meeting was informed that over the past year, 88 cases were registered under the Anti-Money Laundering Act in which 270 accused were arrested; 234 people were arrested in 998 cases of electricity and gas theft.
The meeting was informed that during 27 raids conducted across the country since Jan last year, 20 people had been arrested and a large quantity of spurious drugs seized.
The FIA director general informed the interior minister that 305 cases of cyber crimes had been dealt with and equipment worth Rs83.68m seized and 270 people arrested.
The minister observed that there were public complaints about hassles at airports during immigration for which a mechanised system should be evolved. There should be a system of snap-checking to identify and punish officials causing unnecessary delays.
The minister was informed that an efficient complaint management system was being launched at major airports which would enable people to register complaints through SMS to FIA officials.
Since Jan 2014, about 1,500 pending cases from previous years have been cleared and the backlog reduced considerably.
The meeting was informed that during the fiscal year 2013-14, an amount of Rs6 billion had been recovered under different heads by various wings of the FIA, compared to Rs340m recovered a year earlier.
Published in Dawn, February 3rd, 2015
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