The government’s Financial Investigation Unit (FIU) is negotiating with Japan to sign a deal to work together on financial investigation, including money laundering, and exchange of information in a bid to combat illicit transnational finance activities, according to the Unit’s Police Captain Myint Soe.
“Myanmar and Japan are expected to sign a MOU in the near future. The government’s goal is to boost international cooperation by securing agreements with three to five countries per year,” Myint Soe told Myanmar Business Today.
So far, Myanmar has inked memorandum of understandings (MOU) with seven countries – including Thailand, Indonesia, Bangladesh, South Korea, Russia, Sri Lanka, and Nepal – for cooperation in crime investigation.
Myanmar has also pledged to follow international conventions, including the United Nations (UN) Convention on against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (1988), the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (2000) and the UN Convention Against Corruption (2003).
Myanmar enacted the Anti-Money Laundering Law in March, while the bi-laws are currently being drafted.
President U Thein Sein said in a recent speech that bribery and corruption is rampant among civil servants, and the mindset of those people needs to change in order to extinguish the problem. He vowed to strengthen the process of fighting corruption before the end of his term.
