THE cooperation of domestic financial institutions is necessary to help identify money laundered by international criminals, said an official from the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Police Colonel Sit Aye, the director of the ministry’s International Relations Department, said financial institutions were obliged, under a law enacted in June 2002 to control money laundering, to report their clients’ fiscal activities.

The law requires financial institutions to report any cash transactions in excess of K100 million or any other suspicious account activity to the ministry’s Central Control Board, which then investigates to determine their legality.

Police Colonel Sit Aye, who heads the board’s Financial Intelligence Unit, said that all banks must accommodate investigations by compliance officers to streamline the reporting process.

The board also processes reports on property transactions sent by the Settlements and Land Records Department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation.

During the past nine months the board has monitored more than 2000 reports on cash transactions and 15 reports on property transactions, said Police Colonel Sit Aye.

None of these reports raised suspicions of laundering, he said.

“We are very careful to ensure that the monitoring mechanism doesn’t affect business transactions or the economy of the country,” Police Colonel Sit Aye said.

Police Colonel Sit Aye said international norms and standards of anti-laundering laws were not yet familiar to officials at domestic banking and financial institutions.

“International syndicates tend to base their operations in countries with the weakest legislation and enforcement, which jeopardise all the other countries in the world,” he said.

In April 2004 Myanmar signed the UN Convention against Transnational Organised Crime, intended to increase worldwide cooperation in the fight against money laundering and other illegal activities committed by international criminal groups.

In the same month, Myanmar enacted the Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters Law, he said.

He said Myanmar is working to change its status as a non-cooperative country in international efforts to counter money laundering, a designation bestowed by the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force, which was formed in 1989 and includes 29 countries.

“Myanmar is prepared to collaborate with the international community to counter these problems,” he said.

The Central Control Board provided training from September 22-24 on countering money laundering and financing terrorism to 42 officials from three state-own banks and18 private banks in Yangon and Mandalay.

Police Colonel Sit Aye said similar training courses will be conducted in Mandalay, Sagaing and Tanintharyi divisions, and Shan, Kachin and Mon states.