The People's Bank of China (PBC), the central bank, said on Wednesday it would draw up regulations to strictly enforce the country's anti-money laundering law "as soon as possible".

 

The bank would soon issue a series of regulations to combat money laundering in securities, futures and insurance sectors, said Chen Xiaoyun, an official with the PBC.

 

The law would help China's accession to the world's money policing agency, the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF), said Liu Lianke, an official with the PBC's anti-money laundering bureau, adding that China is likely to join the inter-governmental organization in June 2007.

 

The law, approved on Tuesday by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), the country's top legislature, will come into effect on January 1 next year.

 

The PBOC launched its anti-money laundering campaign in 2003, and established an anti-money laundering bureau and a monitoring and analysis center.

 

By the end of 2005, all the country's commercial banks, 90 percent of the urban credit cooperatives and foreign banks, and 50 percent of the rural credit unions had access to the monitoring and analysis network.

 

According to the China Anti-Money Laundering Monitoring and Analysis Center, 683 suspicious cases had been reported to the police by the end of 2005, involving 137.8 billion yuan (17.2 billion U.S. dollars) and more than one billion U.S. dollars.

 

The FATF was established at the G-7 Summit in Paris in 1989, in response to mounting concern over money laundering. It has 33 members and China became an observer in 2005.

 

(Xinhua News Agency November 2, 2006)