SME Times News Bureau | 02 Nov, 2015
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will on Monday inaugurate an
international conference here on regional cooperation to deal effectively with
illicit financial flows, mainly from tax frauds and human trafficking.
The three-day conference on "Networking the Networks" would attempt
to identify the best practices of international organisations for cooperation
on illicit financial flows, the finance ministry said in a statement here on
Saturday.
"The proposal to hold the 'Networking the Networks' meeting in India was
agreed during the last visit of the executive director, UNODC (United Nations
Office on Drugs and Crime) to India on December 3, 2014 and his meeting with
the revenue secretary," the statement said.
"He has also reaffirmed UNODC's readiness to further extend support to
India and the region in countering trans-national organized crime and promoting
drug prevention, treatment and care among vulnerable population groups,"
it added.
With South Asia being vulnerable to illicit financial flows, informal money
transfer systems are also popular and can be easily misused by the criminal
networks for the transfer of crime proceeds, as well as for terrorism
financing.
"One of the ways to effectively combat the criminal networks is to disrupt
their financial flows. But the criminal networks are of transnational nature
and money movements are executed very fast," the statement said.
"So to combat these criminal networks and their illicit financial flows,
law enforcement agencies need fast operational cooperation with their foreign
partners, and capacities to deal with the financial crimes," it added.
The conference would also deal with instituting a regional coordination
mechanism for intelligence sharing in criminal matters.
Currently there are multiple regional organizations for law enforcement
cooperation like the Central Asian Regional Information and Coordination Centre
(CARICC) and Southeast European Law Enforcement Centre (SELEC).
"But their capacities are not fully utilised for tracing of illicit
financial flows and for the law enforcement-financial intelligence
cooperation," the statement said.
The conference would also make recommendations on best practices and solutions
which can be applied to the nascent South Asia Regional Information and
Coordination Centre (SARICC).