The role of the Central Bank of Iraq in the fight against money laundering

12/16/2015 0:00

Dr.. Acer Yassin

Recently active interest in the study the phenomenon of money laundering operations and its relationship to the transactions managed by the Central Bank of Iraq through the auction currency and methods of administration for the work of private banks and conversions.

This relationship comes from the nature of work at the Central Bank and the nature of money laundering where the means of money laundering in financial institutions is to enter or transfer or deal with any funds resulting from the suspicious transactions source or illegally in a bank or financial institution in order to hide or blur the true source of those funds for teaching them legalized.

Free-market policy and openness to the global economy have led to the formation of fertile ground for this phenomenon, and create a favorable environment for the birth of the phenomenon of money laundering and growth in Iraq for riches or private, commissions and traders in the black market benefits in what is forbidden and the theft of state funds and tax evasion and smuggling of goods, cash and trade spoiled food and the theft of inventions, monuments and speculation in land and real estate in the stock market as well as espionage and borrowing from banks 'activities without adequate safeguards and escape loans, and the collection of depositors' money and smuggled abroad.

And signed a big small accessory Office of the Central Bank of the Iraqi mission to monitor money laundering operations in an atmosphere of diversity of sources is legitimate in Iraq, ranging from bank robberies and banks after the occupation of Iraq as well as from oil and its derivatives smuggling abroad, in addition to a large amount of money earned from operations tainted by suspicions of financial and administrative corruption in the state apparatus, including large embezzlement operations allocated to the service projects of funds.

This task is certainly not of the tasks that are easy to handle, they take the means and different forms such as conversion and deposit of funds suspicious resulting from illegal actions in one Iraqi banks and then transferred to the home's original depositors, so that the bank has the money that funds generated by the work of non project and make it look like legitimate money and when it is difficult to distinguish them and control.

And then hold them accountable, especially when what enables businessman who is trying to wash his money by holding cash transactions that are employed to convert the weak local currency accruing from the business is legitimate to gold or jewelry or other assets that can be sold abroad against foreign currencies and deposit it in the country foreign where has the money laundering process.

To complicate matters further in the control process required by the Central Bank of Iraq's institutions and in solidarity with the government institutions is the emergence of counterfeit bills by the owner of the money is clean establish or buy a business problem (Establishment Project) in Iraq, The washing process in this case to buy or the sale of goods through the sham operations, where money buys scrubber for goods from a company that intended to convert the money to it.

And the required control of the Central Bank requires that its ability to rapidly and effectively checking on the large size of the bills offered by banks to cover their dealings in the currency auction hosted by the Central Bank.

It is often difficult to be supplied to the institutions of the Central Bank of Iraq and in particular to Article 19 of the Money Laundering Act No. 93 of 2004 «financial institution Office learn reporting money laundering if it has reason to believe that discourse suspicious has happened, whether conducted by the customer or by someone else », which made one of the most important means of detecting money laundering entrusted to the same financial institutions to Tochireha.

The opening up of Iraq to foreign investment and the size of raised his projects that the authorities supervising them vary depending on the backgrounds between Iraqi ministries and bodies provincial investment of the National Authority for Investment and provincial councils and the lack, in many cases the knowledge required the dangers of money laundering and distinguish them from the investment of the project, all of this leads us to ring the alarm bells of the money that will enter Iraq in the next stage size and we call today to pilot projects Perhaps one of the most prominent million project housing units announced by the National Investment Commission in addition to a wide range of strategic investment projects and the need to ensure sources of funds entering capital in such projects.

The work of both the Iraqi ministries on the unit and that the mind of laws that work within the framework that enjoys full immunity from the rest of the laws in force in Iraq, including anti-money laundering which is supervised by the Central Bank of Iraq Law Authority, Let this be an invitation for us all to come for pettiness and upgrading to realize the dangers of this scourge on the overall development process in Iraq.


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