The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Friday advised financial institutions to ensure that beneficial owners, directors, members, trustees and authorized signatories of any company are not linked with any proscribed entities or persons. The SBP has amended the paragraph 6 of the Guidelines on Compliance of Government of Pakistan's Notifications issued under United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolutions.
According to amended paragraph, banks/ DFIs/MFBs should not provide any banking services to proscribed entities and persons or their associated persons as required under Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) Regulations. For this purpose, necessary measures should be taken. In case of entity accounts, it should be ensured that their beneficial owners, directors, members, trustees and authorized signatories are not linked with any proscribed entities and persons, whether under the same name or with a different name.
The association of individuals/ entities with proscribed entities and persons may be determined on the basis of appropriate screening of sanctions lists/ watch lists, publically known information or linkages on the basis of online NTN verification, government or regulatory sources, reliable media information, etc. While opening new accounts or extending services to customers, any similarity between the identifying information of the customer and that of proscribed entities and persons, including national identification number, address, etc may be viewed with suspicion and properly investigated for necessary action as per requirements.
The banks/ DFIs/MFBs have also been asked to monitor their relationships on a continuous basis and ensure that no such relationship exists. If any such relationship is found, the same should be immediately reported to Financial Monitoring Unit (FMU) and other actions be taken as per law, the amended paragraph concluded. SBP has advised banks/ DFIs/MFBs to align their existing monitoring function/systems with current provisions within a period of six (06) months from the issuance of these amendments. It may be mentioned here that the government of Pakistan has already prescribed penalty up to Rs 10 million for non-compliance of sanctions regime being implemented through SROs under the UN (Security Council) Act, 1948.