The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in its mutual evaluation report has pulled up the Indian government on the risk to abuse that the non-profit sector faces in India, said the non-government organisation Amnesty International on Thursday.
“The report published today, based on the fourth round of India’s evaluation on its measures to tackle illicit financing, highlights the ‘critical’ need to ‘taking a risk-based and educative approach with non-profit organisations’,” the Amnesty International statement said.
“The global financial watchdog significantly calls for ‘priority actions’, one of which is to ensure India’s civil society is not unnecessarily harassed and intimidated under the pretext of money-laundering or terrorism-financing. While the Indian government may harp only on the positives in the FATF’s report on India, they can’t conveniently downplay how they have been rapped for their partial compliance with measures to protect the legitimate activities of the non-profit sector,” Aakar Patel of Amnesty International India said.
The NGO said the report showed that India was only ‘partially compliant’ against FATF Recommendation 8 which required that laws and regulations to combat money laundering and terrorism financing targeted only those non-profit organisations that were identified - through a careful, targeted “risk-based” analysis - as vulnerable to terrorism financing abuse.
Three points of importance flagged in the report by FATF include the inability of India’s Income Tax department to demonstrate that its monitoring and outreach prioritised the 7,500 non-profit organisations identified to be at-risk of terrorism financing abuse, the NGO said.
It said the FATF also noted that the burdensome registration and audit requirements that non-profits in India have to undergo are not ‘always risk-based or implemented based on consultations with [them] to avoid negatively impacting their work’.
“Thirdly, the FATF acknowledges that the 2020 amendments to the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) were implemented without adequate consultation with non-profits. Thereby, ‘impacting their activity or operating models’. The Indian government has shut down foreign funding for thousands of civil society groups using FCRA with over 20,600 non-government organisations losing their licences to receive foreign funding in the past decade, many of them groups that have long promoted human rights in the country,” the NGO said.
In addition, the report also highlights the delay in prosecutions under Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) were “resulting in a high number of pending cases and accused persons in judicial custody waiting for cases to be tried and concluded”, it said.
“Amnesty International has consistently flagged how these laws have been weaponised by authorities to target, intimidate, harass and silence critics. In consultation with the non-profit sector, the government needs to put in place measures that are focused, proportionate, and not overbroad by bringing laws like FCRA and UAPA in line with international human rights standards...,” Mr. Patel said.
Published - September 20, 2024 12:50 am IST
