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Guernsey’s Financial Intelligence Unit entered a Memorandum of Understanding with its Bangladesh counterparts because of an ongoing case involving both jurisdictions.
The MoU was signed at a money laundering and terrorist financing summit in Latvia last week. Adrian Hale, Head of Guernsey’s Financial Intelligence Unit, said the agreement was “beneficial” given the active case so that the two jurisdictions could “cooperate more effectively”.
Mr Hale told Express that the agreement would provide “a gateway to share information relating to Bangladesh citizens living in Guernsey to Bangladesh, which may relate to them being subject to a fraud or victim of a serious crime or are themselves involved in money laundering within the jurisdiction”.
Mr Hale said that a bilateral agreement is not required to share information between the Guernsey and Bangladeshi intelligence units, but that some nations require an MoU to collaborate with Guernsey.
Guernsey already has 34 MoU with other members of the EGMONT Group - an international consortium of financial intelligence units - including Nigeria, India, the Cayman Islands and Latvia.
Pictured: The MoU was signed in Latvia last week by representatives of each jurisdiction.
In 2014, Bangladesh was removed from a list of countries identified as having strategic anti-money laundering deficiencies.
In 2021, Transparency International ranked Bangladesh 147 out of 180 countries in its Corruption Perception Index.
Express questioned if Bangladesh’s routine ranking by international institutions as one of the most corrupt countries in the world was a concern to financial crime investigators in Guernsey.
Mr Hale disagreed, saying that EGMONT “have very strict procedures and information sharing agreements within the group in respect of sharing intelligence amongst members”.
“I have personally met a number of staff from the Bangladesh FIU and there has never been any concern regarding the sharing of information between each country,” he said.
Guernsey enters financial crime MoU with Bangladesh
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