Finance ministry clears changes to anti-money-laundering monitoring rules

Pakistan's National Executive Committee on Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism approved a set of regulatory changes on Tuesday, including revised thresholds for currency transaction reports and the addition of two entries to the schedules of the Anti-Money Laundering Act.

Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb chaired the committee's 19th meeting, according to a Finance Division press release. The committee reviewed progress on decisions taken at its previous meeting, the performance of the Financial Monitoring Unit, institutional capacity, and the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning in AML-CFT operations.

The approved revisions cover the thresholds for Currency Transaction Reports under the framework used to analyse Suspicious Transaction Reports and CTRs. The press release did not give the revised figures.

The committee also approved including Section 28 of the Pakistan Maritime Zones Act, 2023, in Schedule I of the Anti-Money Laundering Act, and cleared the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority for inclusion in Schedule IV of the same law.

Aurangzeb called for timely implementation of the decisions, better coordination among the institutions involved and regular monitoring to keep the AML-CFT regime effective. He asked for the Financial Monitoring Unit's analytical and operational capabilities to be strengthened through a clear implementation roadmap with defined timelines.

The committee said the framework needed to stay aligned with evolving financial risks and emerging technologies, and that the analytical capacity of the relevant institutions should be raised.

The participants included the federal minister for law and justice, the governor of the State Bank of Pakistan, the finance secretary, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan, the director general of the AML-CFT Authority, and senior officials of the Financial Monitoring Unit and other ministries and divisions.

The committee meets under the finance minister to coordinate the country's anti-money-laundering and terrorism-financing controls across regulators, law enforcement and the central bank. Its decisions feed into the framework that banks, exchange companies and other regulated entities follow when reporting large or unusual transactions.