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âKingdom Has Done Everything to Choke Terror Fundingâ
The Kingdom is continuing to freeze bank accounts that are not updated and pressing ahead with efforts to combat money laundering and terror funding, a senior central bank official said yesterday. âWe started in early April gradually blocking accounts that were not updated, and the process is ongoing, with accounts not updated within a 90-day grace period frozen automatically,â said Khaled Abu Obeid, chairman of the anti-financial crime and money laundering committee of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA). By the end of May, accounts that were frozen because they were not updated âranged between five and eight percentâ of the total, he told AFP.There are about 3.2 million personal accounts and around 112,000 corporate accounts in the 11 banks operating in Saudi Arabia, most of which have hundreds of branches across the Kingdom. Holders of personal accounts were required to provide valid identification, while companies were asked to provide either a current commercial registration or valid IDs for people who have authority to sign. The frozen accounts are unblocked once they are in order, Abu Obeid said. Saudi Arabia said on March 31 it had received a clean bill of health from the inter-governmental Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on money laundering and terror funding following a trip to the Kingdom by an FATF team in September 2003. Posted by: Fred 2004-06-26 |
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