Australia will fund Myanmar's anti-money laundering project and help develop guidelines for financial investigators of the country, the Myanmar Times reported Monday.

The 15-month project would be launched later this month by the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Center, the Financial Intelligence Unit of the Myanmar Home Ministry was quoted as saying.

To help the project, Australia is arranging a series of workshops to train Myanmar officials in terms of technique for investigating money laundering, covering the courses on on-line banking, electronic reporting, data analyzing systems and combating financial terrorism, said the report.

Myanmar promulgated an anti-money laundering law in June 2002 which designates that banks and financial institutions are to report transactions of more than 100 million Kyats (about 100,000 US dollars) to the Central Control Board (CCB).

According to the CCB, it has received 7,624 cash transaction reports and 72 property transaction reports by the end of July this year with some suspicious transactions still under investigation.

Meanwhile, during this year, the Myanmar government has sealed three major private banks -- the Myanmar Mayflower Bank (MMB), the Asia Wealth Bank (AWB) and the Myanmar Universal Bank (MUB) for alleged involvement in money laundering.

In July this year, Myanmar and Thailand also reached a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on cooperation in combating money laundering especially against laundering of funds obtained from transnational crimes.

To step up fight against money laundering, Myanmar has set up an eight-member investigation body under the CCB to launch probe into matters legalizing money and property obtained by illegal means.

As part of its increased international cooperation in the aspects, Myanmar joined in signing the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime in April 2004.

Source: Xinhua