The Director of the Financial Intelligence Unit, Razim Buksh said that with an estimated $100 million in black money being laundered annually into the country, efforts to combat money laundering has to be improved.

As stakeholder prepare for the 2nd National Anti Money Laundering Conference this Thursday in Suva, Buksh said that drugs is a cash commodity and when Fiji is used as a trans shipment point for drugs, the Unit very strongly believes that the funds also flow through the financial institutions in Fiji.

He said these transactions would not just be in thousands, it will be in millions of dollars so the effort should be for the Unit to look at the crime, as well as the transaction and the proceeds of those crimes.

Buksh added that they have a lot of cases of local cannabis and they need to establish what dealers and farmers do with the money, who keeps a track of where the funds are ending up and are the marijuana planters continuing to flourish from the proceeds of crime.

He said it's a big amount but because the anti money laundering framework in Fiji is fairly new and they cannot at this stage determine the full extent of the problem.

He said the country is losing as much as $50 million in tax earnings annually because of money laundering and the loss is just the tip of the iceberg.

He said the measures that will be discussed at the conference this week are not only important but timely as they will boost the much needed additional tax revenue that the country is losing at the hands of tax evaders.

Meanwhile, the theme for this year's conference is "Investigating Money Laundering".



Story by: Sneh Chaudhry