Kathmandu. The government is going to form a separate powerful ‘Anti-Economic Crime Authority’ to investigate and prosecute economic crimes. Finance Minister Swarnim Wagle said that the government is ready to form a separate authority like the Authority within one year to conduct effective investigations into economic crime cases.
Finance Minister Wagle informed that the government is going to form a separate authority to investigate financial crimes while answering questions raised by MPs on the Prevention of Money Laundering (Third Amendment) Bill 2083 in the House of Representatives meeting on Thursday. At present, various 13 regulatory bodies including the Authority are investigating and registering cases related to money laundering.
Thus, when many agencies are active for the same work, the labor resources of the state are being spent. Finance Minister Wagle also urged the parliamentarians to discuss the formation of a separate powerful authority to solve this problem.
At present, 13 different investigative agencies including the Authority conduct investigations and register cases related to money laundering based on more than 50 laws,” Finance Minister Wagle said. “There is a discussion on whether to form a separate and powerful agency, which will increase the state’s expenses when investigating the same matter by different agencies, burden and delays in the court system, and even wrongful collection.”
Finance Minister Wagle said that since Nepal is currently on FATF’s gray list and the government is trying to remove the country from the list as soon as possible, the bills have to be strengthened. “Even though there is a situation where this bill can be amended in the future, due to its importance, only limited but effective matters have been amended,” he said.
Wagle commented that in the past, when the Money Laundering Investigation Department was under the Prime Minister’s Office, there was ‘political harassment’ by filing various cases against different people based on political interference. He claimed that the said department is now under the Ministry of Finance to control the malpractices and malpractices.
In response to a question in the parliament that the bill was amended to take revenge for bias targeting a particular person or party, Wagle said, “In the past, those who needed to be hurt, the leaders who needed to be slandered, were focused on and were given grief by filing cases.” “We have learned from the unpleasant lesson of widespread misuse of extremely powerful weapons and tried to bring it into a professional rhythm,” Wagle said, adding, “This law should not be used as a political weapon.” We have to get the country out of the gray list as soon as possible. Wagle claims that the country cannot get out of the gray list if wealth laundering is made a political goal.
The House of Representatives passed the Prevention of Money Laundering (Third Amendment) Ordinance Replacement Bill 2083 on Thursday. In the Parliament session, Finance Minister Wagle proposed that the bill be passed. The meeting passed the proposal by majority. The jurisdiction of the Asset Laundering Department has been clarified by amending two sections of the original Act.
The Co-operative (First Amendment) Ordinance Replacement Bill has also been approved by the House of Representatives. Pratibha Rawal, Minister of Land Management, Cooperatives, Federal Affairs and General Administration proposed that the Cooperatives (First Amendment) Ordinance, 2083 be approved. It has also been approved by the assembly.
In the bill, there is a provision that the government should establish a ‘revolving fund’ to return the money of the savers of troubled cooperatives, return the money of the savers through the same fund, and the money received from the government should be paid from the money received from the debt recovery of the cooperative and the sale of property.