- Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) under Ministry of Finance, has released a list of around 9500 Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs), which have been categorised as high-risk financial institutions.
- The FIU has released the list on its website showing the names of these NBFCs which have been found non-compliant to the Prevention of Money Laundering Act rules.
- As per the PMLA, all NBFCs have to appoint a principal officer in the financial institutions and report all suspicious and cash transactions of over 10 lakh rupees to the FIU. But, these companies have been found not following this rules as on 31st of January this year.
- After the demonetisation of high-value currency notes in November 2016, NBFCs and several rural and urban cooperative banks had come under the scanner of the Income Tax Department and the ED for illegally converting banned currency notes.
About Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU)
- Financial Intelligence Unit – India (FIU-IND) was set by the Government of India vide O.M. dated 18th November 2004 as the central national agency responsible for receiving, processing, analyzing and disseminating information relating to suspect financial transactions.
- FIU-IND is also responsible for coordinating and strengthening efforts of national and international intelligence, investigation and enforcement agencies in pursuing the global efforts against money laundering and related crimes.
- FIU-IND is an independent body reporting directly to the Economic Intelligence Council (EIC) headed by the Finance Minister
- The mission of the organization is to provide quality financial intelligence for safeguarding the financial system from the abuses of money laundering, terrorism financing and other economic offences.
- The vision of the organisation is to become a highly agile and trusted organization that is globally recognized as an efficient financial intelligence unit.
