Expenses decrease

Geraldine Panapasa
Tuesday, July 23, 2013

THE Fiji Financial Intelligence Unit recorded a 13.6 per cent decrease in its total expenditure for 2012, according to its annual report.

This marked a drop from 2011 figures of $771,011 to $666,025 last year.

The unit, whose operations are funded by the Reserve Bank of Fiji, recorded a capital expenditure of $35,615 in 2010 and $36,665 in 2011.

"The 2012 expenditure of FIU is incorporated into the 2012 financial statements of the RBF and is audited as part of its 2012 annual accounts," it said.

FIU director Razim Buksh said they continued to play an important role in Fiji in the fight against money laundering, terrorist financing, fraud, corruption and other organised crime.

"As a result of FIU's support for financial inclusion initiatives in Fiji by the RBF and other Fijian government agencies and the private sector, a policy advisory was issued by the FIU in 2012 that allowed financial institutions to include the Voter Registration Cards for customer due diligence purposes," he said.

He said FIU continued to strengthen bilateral information exchange mechanism with FIUs of foreign countries. As a result of FIU's enforcement and compliance enforcement measures, he said a foreign exchange dealer was convicted in 2012 for failure to comply with the suspicious transaction reporting obligations under the Financial Transactions Reporting (FTR) Act.

"This is Fiji's first successful case under the FTR Act.

"I am pleased to report that Fiji recorded five money laundering conviction cases in 2012, which is the highest annual number of successful money laundering cases to be recorded in Fiji," Mr Buksh said.

He said one of the money laundering conviction cases in 2012 involved internet banking cyber-crime activities.

This, he said, was also Fiji's first and only case for this type of cyber scam.