A report in the leading Pakistan English daily, Dawn, the country’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) is planning to ask the PTA to block websites in the country that deal in cryptocurrencies. PTA is Pakistan’s state Telecom Authority.
Crypto Ban Proposal
The motivation behind the proposed move is to guard against financial fraud and money laundering. It is felt that crypto websites could be used for such illegal activities.
This planned move was revealed at a press conference by the Director-General of FIA. The Director General, Sanaullah Abbasi, was addressing the press conference after he had held a meeting with the officials of the State Bank of Pakistan.
Abbasi brought out that the SBP had already forwarded to the FIA its recommendations for regulating cryptocurrencies. He went on to add that crypto was increasingly giving a new twist to financial fraud. He highlighted that the FIA was planning to rope in legal specialists to deal with issues related to financial fraud. The issues are multidimensional as they also involve transactions in cryptocurrencies.
FIA’s Plans
The FIA added that earlier in the month, it had tried to talk to Binance. Binance is the world’s largest exchange for crypto assets. FIA was reaching out to the exchange to investigate what it suspected was a scam. The scam had, reportedly, defrauded several thousand investors of over $100 million.
As per reports in the local media on 13 Jan, the Pakistani government and the State Bank of Pakistan intend to ban cryptocurrencies in Pakistan. The local media reports were based on a document that they had accessed. The document had been submitted by the Pakistan government in a provincial court.
