Says ensure customers don’t include terrorist entities.
The National Housing Bank (NHB) has sent a cautionary notice to all registered housing finance companies to ensure that terrorist entities linked to Al Qaeda and the Taliban are not their customers.
NHB is both a state-owned bank and the national regulatory authority for the housing finance sector. It has also put up the notice on its website, to help prevent money laundering and financing of terrorism.
The notice contains a list of 20-odd entities associated with terror organisations, as declared by the United Nations. The names include Global Relief Foundation, Benevolence International Foundation and Bosanka Idealna Futura and their allied organisations across the world.
All housing financing companies have been advised to update the consolidated list of individuals/entities linked to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. “Before opening any new account, it should be ensured that the name of the proposed customer does not appear in the list,” it says. Also, housing finance companies should scan all existing accounts to ensure that no account is held by or linked to any of the entities or individuals included in the list.
Although real estate and housing are among the areas which have been linked to underworld money in the past, NHB officials denied any immediate trigger for the notice. Ranjan Kumar Barun, regional manager, told Business Standard, “We come out with cautionary circulars from time to time.” Recently, it had sent a notice to the housing finance companies, cautioning them on fraudulent activities in the sector.
“The idea is to tell the housing finance companies to exercise caution while doing financial transactions,” said the official. These notices are issued under the direction of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
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RBI had also issued the latest circular on terrorist organisations to all commercial banks and non-banking finance companies. According to the RBI spokesperson, this is an ongoing exercise as part of a government to government agreement to share terrorist organisation details.
The agreement was initiated by the G7 states under the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to combat the threat of money laundering. FATF is based in Paris, with 34 members and a rotating presidency. FATF is seen as an international standard setting body in the area of anti-money laundering.