Financial Information Unit-Nepal (FIU-Nepal) is soon link banks and financial institutions with a new software, according to its international commitment.

The FIU-Nepal has installed a new software ‘goAML’ developed by United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC), according to Nepal’s commitment to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) – the global anti-money laundering body – that it will complete automation of the FIU in 2010.

The FIU has asked commercial banks to make their information sharing system compatible with the new FIU software. After commercial banks, development banks, finance companies and other financial and non-financial institutions will gradually linked to FIU software.

Now the banks and financial institutions will also have to have a compatible system to link them with the FIU-Nepal.

According to the AML/CFT global commitment, the banks and financial institutions will have to report the FIU-Nepal of more than Rs 1 million transaction and any of the suspicious transaction.

The unit will receive, process, analyse and disseminate financial information and intelligence on suspected transactions under money laundering and terrorist financing. It will then forward to Investigation Department.

The UNODC has provided the software for free of charge but the unit has to pay service charges for the mobilisation of UNODC staff to help them operate the system. The UNODC staff will stay for three years.

Developed by Information Technology Service of UNODC, in partnership with the UNODC Global Programme against Money Laundering, Proceeds of Crime and the Financing of Terrorism, the integrated software solution, ‘goAML’ was developed specifically for FIUs use. It integrates 14 separate functions – include data collection, clean-up, ad hoc queries and matching, statistical reports, structured analysis, profiling, rule-based analysis, workflow system, task assignment tracking, document management, an intelligence file management system, data integration, data acquisition, charting, diagramming and an intelligence report writer – into one package.

Earlier, the central bank had tried to procure software from other vendors, but it procured the software from the UNODC – the UN body that has sold the system to many countries around the world – for free.

Apart from Nepal,  Bangladesh uses the software in South Asia.

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