Thailand speeds up anti-money laundering law

BANGKOK, May 18 (TNA) - Thailand is speeding up the promulgation of an anti-money laundering law in order to remove the country from the so-called “dark-grey list” of the France-based Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF). When inaugurating the Money Expo 2012, being held at the Impact Trade and Exhibition Centre in Muang Thong Thani in the outskirts of Bangkok from May 17-20, Thai Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Kittirat Na-Ranong told reporters of the plan, in response to an FATF earlier decision on putting Thailand on its dark-grey list due to, what it considered, the country's inability to enact effective anti-laundering laws aimed at countering terrorism. Kittirat said he has submitted Thailand's draft anti-money laundering law to the Cabinet and expects that the new law should be enacted later this year. Thailand is among five new countries added to the FATF's blacklist over the past two years. Other four countries include Indonesia, Pakistan, Ghana and Tanzania. The FATF is an intergovernmental organization founded in 1989 by an initiative of the world's then G7 powerful economies, with its main objectives of developing policies to combat money laundering and terrorism financing. The FATF Secretariat is housed at the headquarters of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris.(TNA)