Apr 10, 2013 1:24 AM GMT+1000 .

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-09/lithuania-urged-to-step-up-efforts-to-fight-money-laundering.html

Lithuania needs to be more active in preventing and prosecuting crime related to the illegal movement of money, the Council of Europe’s monitoring body for money laundering and terrorism said.

“Results both in terms of money-laundering convictions and confiscation of proceeds of crime remain modest,” Strasbourg- based Moneyval said in a report published today. The authorities’ approach to investigations “does not appear to be sufficiently proactive.”

While publicly available information suggests criminal activity such as corruption, smuggling and flows of “dirty money” from abroad has increased in recent years, Lithuania’s authorities have been lax in monitoring the situation and slow to bolster legislation, according to the report.

Some money laundering has probably gone undetected because of insufficient supervision of non-bank financial institutions and construction companies, Moneyval wrote.