Governor State Bank Ashraf Wathra along with British High Commissioner and UNODC representative inaugurated the Data Centre.
The State Bank of Pakistan inaugurated Pakistan’s first high-tech data centre by State Bank of Pakistan Governor, the British High Commissioner and the Representative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime at the Financial Monitoring Unit Karachi.
The newly established Data centre will provide help to Financial Monitoring Unit to track down money laundering and terrorism financing. The FMU is the special intelligence unit by finance ministry for fighting money laundering and terror financing.
This specialized Data Centre will host a specialist analytical suite of software (goAML) developed by UNODC. It will enable the FMU to automate collection and analysis of suspicious financial transactions being received from banks, exchange companies and other reporting entities in Pakistan.
Before, financial data at the autonomous FMU was undertaken manually which comes quiet helping towards modern money launders. The specialist analytical suite software (goAML) along with high precision equipment installed in the new data centre will allow the FMU to analyse suspicious transactions in a more robust, sophisticated and automated manner.
The Governor of the State Bank said, “I am confident that FMU’s Data Centre will strengthen its ability to generate better financial intelligence which would help our law enforcement agencies in successful investigations and prosecutions of money launderers and terrorism financers”.
Speaking to the media, SBP Director Abid Qamar said that “Data centre would detect money laundering that was currently being done through formal banking channels. It was not meant for controlling money laundering that was taking place through illegal channels, such as physical movement of currency notes across international borders”.
Mr. Thomas Drew CMG, British High Commissioner said: “The UK Government is proud to have supported the establishment of the Financial Monitoring Unit’s data centre, as part of the Pakistan Government’s wider commitment to tackle financial crime. This is a great step forward by Pakistan to meet its international obligations and close the space for money laundering and terrorism financing in the country.”
The Representative for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Mr Cesar Guedes said, “The launch of the data centre at FMU today and its future utilisation for the goAML system supported by the UNODC will be recorded as a significant step taken for the People of Pakistan to build a transparent, just, and fair society in which suspicious financial transactions and financing of terrorism are monitored, deterred and prevented.”