Authority warns of money laundering

THE business community has been urged to make clean business deals here and abroad to avoid creating avenues for money laundering, an official says.
Financial Analysis and Supervision Unit director Benny Popoitai said this following signing of a memorandum of understanding between the Investment Promotion Authority and the Securities Commission of PNG.
“Anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing is not only a Papua New Guinean agenda but a global issue as the country is part of a global community,” Popotai said.
“We live in a global environment. We must make sure that what we do and who we deal with are people that we can trust, people we can deal with some confidence that our business dealings in any way, shape or form do not provide an avenue for money laundering or used to finance terrorist activity.”
The unit was established last year by the National Financial Action Taskforce to combat anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing activities and prevent the country from getting back on the “grey list”.
“Money laundering have some aspects of terrorist financing in it,” Popoitai said.
He explained that money laundering was a process of converting “dirty money” into “clean money” by using the country’s financial system.
“So it is a global agenda and every country in the globe is working on some way, shape or form to ensure that their countries are at least minimising the risk of money laundering and terrorist financing,” he said.
“We are all aware that PNG does not have that kind of risks which means the risks are not high here.”