Accused with links abroad: FBR to send MLA requests to foreign jurisdictions

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) will send the "Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA) requests to the foreign jurisdictions for investigating cases against accused involved in criminal offences to check their links in foreign jurisdictions.

In this regard, the FBR has issued Customs General Order No. 01 of 2023 on Wednesday.

Under the order, the Collectors of Customs or Directors shall ensure that in all cases where the accused or the criminal offence has links in a foreign jurisdiction and evidence from such foreign jurisdiction can be useful for investigation, an MLA request is sent to the concerned foreign jurisdiction.

The request will be made directly through the national focal point under the MLA (Criminal Matters) Act, 2020, under intimation to the Chief, International Customs, FBR; or through the office of Chief, International Customs, FBR.

Under the customs laws, the "Foreign Jurisdiction" means a foreign country with which Pakistan has a bilateral arrangement for mutual legal assistance, including assistance in AML/ CFT cases.

The Collectorate/ Directorate may also seek other forms of international cooperation or informal assistance, under intimation to the Chief, International Customs, FBR directly using the existing organization to organization channels, whether online or manually.

The efforts shall be made to develop and use an automated system to maintain and update record of all incoming and outgoing MLA requests and other forms of international cooperation.

The Directorate of CBCM shall be the overall data repository of all AML/ CFT related cases pertaining to Pakistan Customs, including cases referred to CTD, whether such cases are initiated on the reports of Financial Monitoring Unit (EMU) or of the Collectorates/ Directorates of Pakistan Customs.

All Collectorates/ Directorates of Pakistan Customs shall also maintain an updated record of all cases of predicate offences and shall submit monthly reports to the Chief, Facilitation & Compliance (F&C), FBR with intimation to the Chief, Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Cell FBR.

All Collectorates/ Directorates shall intimate the Directorate of CBCM on monthly basis about the number of money laundering (ML) cases, including cases referred to CTD or other agencies.

The International Customs (IC) Section of the Customs Wing, FBR shall maintain record/ data of all incoming and outgoing MLA requests on the prescribed format. All Collectorates/ Directorates shall be bound to respond to the MLA request received from International Customs (IC) Section of FBR within the specified timelines, if any, and shall keep an updated record of all incoming and outgoing MLA requests pertaining to their respective jurisdiction, FBR added.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023