Money laundering act to cover pornography, gambling and casinos

The government has decided to bring casinos, pornographies, offline-online gambling, and cybercrimes under the ambit of the money laundering law to ensure stricter penalties for the offences.

The National Coordination Committee (NCC) on preventing money laundering and combating financing of terrorism recently tasked authorities concerned to work towards amending relevant acts for this purpose, according to the minutes of a recent meeting of the committee.  

The committee has tasked the Financial Institutions Division (FID) and the Legislative and Parliamentary Affair Division to draw up a draft proposal for amending the Money Laundering Prevention Act, 2012. The recommended amendments include the inclusion of all kinds of gambling, cybercrimes and pornography as money laundering offences under the act.

Besides, the NCC also asked the Ministry of Home Affairs to prepare a draft proposal for amending the Public Gambling Act, 1867 and the Dhaka Metropolitan Police Ordinance, 1976. The proposed amendments will include specific definition of online-offline gambling and casinos in the law, as well as strict penalties for the offences.

Earlier on 9 July 2019, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Bangladesh Police made proposed to bring cybercrimes, pornography, online-offline gambling under the ambit of money laundering offences at a meeting of the Working Committee on AML and CFT.

The Anti-Money Laundering Act, 2012 currently does not recognise cybercrimes, pornography, and gambling as crimes.

“We are now including these under the act. After the amendment, it will be easier to bring offenders of these crimes to face punishment under specific laws. Not only this, it will increase the amount of punishment and fines for crimes,” said an FID official said on condition of anonymity.

According to the existing Money Laundering Prevention Act, 2012, offences which involve laundering or attempts to launder any money or assets acquired through transactions within the country or outside the country are considered to be a money laundering offence.

The offences include, corruption and bribing, currency counterfeiting, document forgery, extortion, fraudulence, illegal arms, drugs and narcotics trade, stolen and other illicit trade in goods; kidnapping, etc.