Money laundering and terrorist financing activities and its prevention: a study on bKash’s AML&CFT department

Abstract

bKash started its journey only with 12 people in 2011, since than it has come a long way. In a span of few years of time bKash has become the leading MFS (Mobile Financial service) of Bangladesh. bKash has created an impact in the life of not only the rural but also the urban people of Bangladesh. bKash is in a mission of providing financial service which will be convenient, affordable and reliable. bKash is neither a bank-led nor Telco-led company rather its business model is totally different from traditional banking system. Unlike traditional banking bKash does not focus on credit or savings instead what it does is it drives transactions and earns revenue from the fees. bKash has 200,000 active agents all over Bangladesh who offers cash-in and cash-out services to the users. bKash’s agents basically act as depository of electronic money while the transaction are being done through customer’s cell phone. But this platform is being misused by some criminal minded people who are basically corrupted and has no moral values. Everyday a lot of people using bKash platform are becoming victims of serious criminal offence like money laundering and terrorist financing. For some reasons day by day ML&TF (money laundering and terrorist financing) activities are increasing at an alarming rate which can be potential threat for bKash. While working with bKash’s AML&CFT (Anti-money laundering and combating Financial Terrorism) department, I have observed that bKash has a fully dedicated department to monitor and control money laundering and financial terrorism related activities. ML&FT (Money laundering and Financial Terrorism) is a huge drawback for bKash. There is particular guideline provided by Bangladesh Bank to combat and prevent this type of illegal activities. The purpose of the report is to find out about Money laundering and terrorist financing activities and its prevention. The analysis and survey part of the report focus on the bKash customer and agent awareness about money laundering and terrorist financing .Furthermore it measures the effectiveness of the preventive measures taken by bKash to combat and monitor any type of ML&TF activities. I have also included my personal observations and insight based on the tasks I was assigned to do during my internship period. This report has delivered the information about how effectively bKash is performing all its tasks to combat ML& TF (Money laundering and terrorist financing) risks through AML&CFT Department. This department very efficiently handles all the money laundering and terrorist financing related v issues. The work process of the department has been explained in details. Based on the observations after conducting the survey, I have tried to find out what challenges bKash is facing in the process combating risks related to money laundering and terrorist financing both internally and externally. At the end of the report, I have incorporated some recommendations which I have got after analyzing the survey data.