TWO money laundering conviction cases were recorded by the Fiji Intelligence Unit (FIU) last year.
FIU director Razim Buksh said in one case the launderer was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment, which was the highest jail term imprisonment in Fiji for money laundering offence.
“Authorities were also able to successfully deal with a number of predicate offences, particularly of financial investigation input from the FIU,” Mr Buksh said in FIU’s recently released 2013 annual report.
He said they received and analysed 522 suspicious transaction reports, 380,430 cash transaction reports, 1.15 million electronic fund transfer reports and 459 boarder currency reports. FIU also disseminated 270 intelligence reports to law enforcement agencies.
“The outcomes in 2013 continued to reflect FIU’s role as the lead agency in the fight against money laundering in Fiji.
“There was an increase in the detection of border currency reporting violations by FIU’s partner agencies in 2013 and a greater number of FIU intelligence disseminations and assistance that were provided on suspended violations under the Customs Acts.”
Last year, he said the FIU also developed strategies and an action plan to implement additional requirements under the new financial action taskforce recommendation.
He said they partnered with the central bank’s information technology team to develop a case management system that would streamline a number of manual processes and enable intelligence analysts to develop clearer intel reports and link charts electronically.
“We manage 4.3million financial transaction information in our database with over 100 external financial institution users,” he said.
