Dar for improving coordination between govt and agencies
Minister for Finance, Ishaq Dar here on Tuesday stressed the need for improving coordination between the federal and provincial governments and law enforcing agencies to deal with the problem of terrorist financing.
The minister said this while chairing a meeting of the Sub-Committee formed by the Prime Minister to recommend ways and means to choke finances for terrorists and terrorist organizations. The Finance Minister said there was also need to promote legal channels for transfer of money within and from outside the country and added "it will help us to completely discourage hawala and hundi system". The Minister remarked that in the current scenario NACTA should assume the leading role in gathering and consolidation of data for use by law enforcing agencies.
He said National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA) should be pro-active in countering terrorism and clearly state the help it requires in undertaking its official obligations. He also asked the participants to peruse international best practices and laws while finalizing their proposal on combating financing for terrorists and terrorist organizations. The participants of the meeting put forth remedial measures to check and prevent financing for terrorism, also describing mechanism for their effective implementation. The Minister appreciated fruitful deliberations by the sub-committee and urged it to finalize recommendations which were practicable and could prove decisive in rooting out terrorist funding. These recommendations will be presented to the Prime Minister along with proposals of other subcommittees for consideration.
The participants of the meeting including representatives of Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Interior, Federal Board of Revenue, State Bank of Pakistan, Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan, NACTA, security agencies and legal consultants also discussed all relevant issues and impediments with regard to investigation, information gathering about funding of terrorist activities.
These impediments, they said in turn negatively impacted the process for award of exemplary sentences to terrorists. The meeting specially discussed the aspect of terrorist funding under the garb of charities, emphasizing fresh registration and fool proof monitoring of all such organizations.
The meeting expressed deep concern on narco-trafficking which it thought was a potent source of terror funding and emphasized on coordination with international agencies to curb financing for acts of terror. It was the consensus view that under the prevalent legal system, investigators including police and Federal Investigation Agency rarely invoked specific provisions, clauses relating to funding of terrorism as contained in the Anti-Terrorism Act and the Anti Money Laundering law.
The focus of security agencies is on nabbing the terrorist instead of looking for the sponsor which was the root cause of the problem. The meeting also observed that in fact the law enforcing personnel lacked proper training and knowledge to track /investigate terrorist financing channels. Further, there was no system to maintain consolidated data on prosecutions carried out by the law enforcing agencies which could be shared by these agencies, helping their investigation.