Money laundering: NBR to strengthen data analysing
Staff Reporter :
The National Board of Revenue (NBR) is planning for strengthening the wings of export-import data analysing in line with preventing trade-based money laundering (TBML).
The TBML has turned into a death-disease for the country as it is creating macroeconomic distortion and destroying the nation in various ways.
A number of reports released by Global Financial Integrity (GFI) in recent times have pinpointed that Bangladesh as being among the worst affected countries to the scourge of the TBML.
According to the GFI, $61.6 billion were siphoned out of Bangladesh between 2005 and 2014, which is equivalent to 25 per cent of its GDP in FY 2016-17. Between 2008 and 2017, Bangladesh lost a staggering $7.53 billion per year on average to trade misinvoicing, which accounted for 17.95 per cent of Bangladesh’s international trade with all its trading partners during the period.
In a more recent report, GFI revealed that $5.9 billion was siphoned out of Bangladesh through trade misinvoicing in 2015-and that Bangladesh is one of the top 30 countries in terms of illicit financial flows.
The TBML has increased in recent years further, although we have no exact data of it.
Keeping the situation in mind, the NBR has initiated to form two special committees to scrutinise containers of exports and imports and their capacity with a view to combating the illegal activities.
The committees of different Customs Bond Commissionerates (CBCs) will be formed consisting of NBR officials from the export and bond departments. NBR took the decision in a recent meeting.
The meeting sources said that, a committee will determine the benchmark for the garment capacity of each standard container, specifying the maximum amount (kg/mt) of garments that can be loaded into the container.
If the product’s weight is significantly below the benchmark, the committee will provide recommendations on implementing a flagging system to identify such anomalies, they added.
The other committee will be tasked with offering recommendations on reconciling sales contracts and master Letters of Credit (LC), as well as handling Utilisation Declarations (UD) and telegraphic transfers (TT) pertaining to exports.
Particularly, their focus will be on instances where these transactions are not linked by a master LC in the Bangladesh Bank dashboard during the advance value repatriation through TT for export proceeds.
Furthermore, the team will conduct a comprehensive analysis of the legal aspects surrounding issues such as Letters of Credit (LC) and offer expert opinions. Additionally, they will present recommendations to address the recent trend of exports falling below imports, the sources added.
NBR officials said that through meticulous surveillance of export activities in the ASYCUDA World System and MIS System, it has come to light that certain exporting firms are engaged in significant imports of raw materials, particularly accessories, via back-to-back LCs.
These same companies are exporting minimal quantities of finished goods, with some instances where mere 300-400 kg products are shipped using FCL containers, they added.
There are suspicions of illicit raw material sales occurring in the open market, while the exports of mere 300-400kg products using an FCL container are highly atypical, they said.
The officials will also scrutinise whether money laundering is being perpetrated by channelling export prices out of the country while simultaneously declaring abnormally low export amounts.
