The efforts of Macao
SAR in the fight against money laundering and terrorist
financing can be traced back to the 1990's. In 1991,
the Decree-Law on drug control was promulgated to allow
the Government to confiscate assets derived from drug
trafficking. The confiscation of assets was further
expanded to other criminal activities by the Penal Code
in 1995. The Law on Organized Crimes promulgated in
1997 goes further to deal with crimes related to conversion,
transfer or dissimilation of illicit assets or proceeds
arising from criminal activities. The Decree Law no.
24/98/M in 1998 stipulates that reporting is mandatory
when suspicious transactions were detected, and this
law formed the basis of the reporting of suspicious
transactions by financial institutions and other entities.
There was great progress in the year
of 2006. In April, the Macao Legislative Assembly, under
Government proposal, passed the anti-money laundering
and counter-terrorist financing legislation, Law no.
2/2006 on prevention and repression of money laundering
crimes and Law no. 3/2006 on prevention and repression
of terrorism. In May 2006, Administrative Regulation
no. 7/2006 was published as a supplementary regulation
which set up the legal requirements for financial institutions
and other non-financial businesses and professions to
carry out customer due diligence measures and report
suspicious money laundering/ terrorist financing transactions
when detected.
To cope with international standard
requirements, the new legislation on anti-money laundering
and counter-terrorist financing requires the establishment
of a special unit to collect, analyze and disseminate
information on suspicious money laundering and terrorist
financing transaction reports. On 8 August 2006, the
Financial Intelligence Office was established under
Executive Ruling no. 227/2006 for this purpose.
The GIF is an independent unit directly
under the Secretary for Economy and Finance and is headed
by a director nominated by the Chief Executive.
The GIF is granted the following authorities
to carry out its duties:-
- To receive information provided in accordance
with Article 7 of the Administrative Regulation
no. 7/2006 and to establish and maintain a database
with such information;
- Analyze the information received, and report the
suspicious money laundering activities to the Public
Prosecution Office;
- To provide assistance to law enforcement agencies,
judicial authorities and other entities empowered
to prevent and prohibit money laundering and terrorist
financing crimes, based on their requests with clearly
stated reasons, particularly in the form of information
giving and technical support;
- To provide to and receive from entities out of
Macao SAR information about money laundering and
terrorist financing crimes, for the implementation
of inter-regional agreements or any other international
law instruments;
- To collaborate with public entities to establish
and revise anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist
financing guidelines they are responsible to issue;
- To develop promotion and education programs for
public awareness about anti-money laundering counter-terrorist
financing;
- To furnish the Secretary for Economy and Finance
with an annual report on its activities.
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