Aug 02, Colombo: The Financial Intelligence Unit of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (FIU - Sri Lanka) recently signed Memoranda of Understanding (MOU) with FIUs of several countries to share financial information to facilitate the investigation and prosecution of persons suspected of money laundering and terrorist financing, the Central Bank announced in a release today.

The FIU-Sri Lanka signed the MoUs with the FIU of of Bank of Mongolia, Federal Financial Monitoring Service of Russian Federation (FIU -Russia), Saudi Arabia Financial Investigation Unit and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network of USA (FIU - USA).

Sri Lanka established the FIU in 2006 under the Financial Transactions Reporting Act (FTRA) No.6 of 2006 and the Central Bank operates it.

Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing are generally considered to be internationally connected criminal activities. Therefore, a greater coordination among Financial Intelligence Authorities is needed to deal with these activities on a global basis, the Central Bank said.

Accordingly, FIUs across the world, adopt MOUs to cooperate with each other with the exchange of information.

With the above MOUs, the total number of MOUs entered into by the FIU- Sri Lanka, has increased to 20.

The other MOUs are with Australia, Belgium, Bangladesh, Canada, India, Malaysia, South Korea, Indonesia, Philippines, Afghanistan, Nepal, Cambodia, Fiji, Slovenia, South Africa and Solomon Islands.