KARACHI: Pakistan’s central bank has ordered commercial banks to quarantine paper money received from health facilities, as banknotes may be spreading coronavirus, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) announced on Monday.
The directive comes amid an increase in the number of infections recorded in Pakistan, where the tally exceeded 900 on Tuesday.
“Instructions have been provided by the SBP to clean, disinfect, seal and quarantine all cash being collected from hospitals and clinics and to block circulation of such cash in the market,” the central bank said in a statement following a video meeting of commercial bank presidents with SBP governor Dr. Reza Baqir.
Banks need to send daily reports on cash collection from health facilities for SBP to be able to supply sufficient amounts of notes, while the collected money will be under a 15-day quarantine.
As disinfection procedures have yet to be in place, for the time being the SBP will be supplying banks with new bills.
“The cash that banks would receive from hospitals would be quarantined and disinfected. We are considering the ways to disinfect such notes and that would be done through medically approved procedures. For now, we are trying to provide new notes,” SBP spokesman Abid Qamar told Arab News on Tuesday.
As banknotes can carry bacteria or viruses from persons who have touched them, hand washing is necessary after handling money.
In Pakistan, however, it is a common habit that people lick their fingers while counting bills.
“This way of cash counting is very dangerous,” said Dr. Qaiser Sajjad, secretary general of Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) “For public awareness, it is advised that if they count banknotes, they should immediately sanitize their hands,” he told Arab News.
The central bank’s decision may reduce some of the dangers posed by the handling of money and shopkeepers say the move timely in the face of the current coronavirus outbreak.
“Though we are exercising caution while handling cash, still it remains a danger, because we don’t know which note is infected,” said Ahmed Hussain, a grocery seller.
Although the central bank has been encouraging electronic payments, cash remains dominant in Pakistan.
“We receive cash as low as Rs12 (for bread) and deal with dozens of people everyday,” bread seller Wali Muhammad said. “We know we are in danger but we can’t afford machines (for non-cash payment).”
Pakistan to 'quarantine,' disinfect banknotes collected from hospitals
https://arab.news/p7vad
Pakistan to 'quarantine,' disinfect banknotes collected from hospitals
- Directive comes amid increased virus cases as national tally exceeded 900 on Tuesday
- Central bank will supply banks with new bills as disinfection procedures are put in place
Pakistani man convicted in US in political assassination plot tied to Iranian paramilitary
- Asif Merchant, 47, worked for Pakistani banks for decades before going into clothing and other businesses
- He testified he met a Revolutionary Guard operative who gave him countersurveillance training, assignments
NEW YORK: A Pakistani business owner who tried to hire hit men to kill a US politician was convicted Friday in a trial that showcased allegations of Iran-backed plotting on American soil.
As the Iran war unfolded in the Mideast, Asif Merchant acknowledged in a US court that he sought to put an assassination in motion during the 2024 presidential campaign — a plot that was quickly disrupted by American investigators before it had a chance to proceed.
A jury in Brooklyn convicted Merchant on terrorism and murder for hire charges.
The verdict after only a couple hours of deliberations followed a weeklong trial that included remarkable testimony from Merchant himself.
Merchant told the jury he was carrying out instructions from a contact in the Islamic Republic’s powerful paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. According to Merchant, the handler never specified a target but broached names including then-candidate Donald Trump, then-President Joe Biden and Nikki Haley, the former UN ambassador who was also in the race for a time.
The Iranian government has denied trying to kill US officials.
The nascent plot fell apart after Merchant showed an acquaintance what he had in mind by using objects on a napkin to depict a shooting at a rally. He asked the man to help him hire assassins. Instead, he was introduced to undercover FBI agents who were secretly recording him, as had the acquaintance.
Merchant told the supposed hit men he needed services that could include killing “some political person” and paid them $5,000 in cash in a parked car in Manhattan.
“This man landed on American soil hoping to kill President Trump — instead, he was met with the might of American law enforcement,” US Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement released after the conviction.
Merchant’s attorney, Avraham Moskowitz, didn’t immediately reply to a message seeking comment.
Merchant, 47, worked for Pakistani banks for decades before going into clothing and other businesses. He has two families, in Pakistan and Iran, and he sometimes visited the US for his garment business.
Merchant testified that he met a Revolutionary Guard intelligence operative about three years ago. The contact gave him countersurveillance training and assignments including the assassination scheme, Merchant said.
He maintained that he had to do his handler’s bidding to protect loved ones in Iran. The defendant said he reluctantly went through the motions but thought he’d be arrested and explain his situation to authorities before anyone was killed.
“I was going along with it,” he said, speaking in Urdu through a court interpreter.
Prosecutors emphasized that Merchant admitted taking steps to enact the plan on behalf of the Revolutionary Guard, which the US considers a foreign terrorist organization, and he didn’t proactively go to authorities.
Instead, he was packing for a flight to Pakistan when he was arrested on July 12, 2024, a day before an unrelated attempt on Trump’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania. Officials said it appeared the Butler gunman acted alone but that they had been tracking a threat on Trump’s life from Iran, a claim that the Islamic Republic called “unsubstantiated and malicious.”
When Merchant subsequently spoke to FBI agents to explore the possibility of a cooperation agreement, he didn’t say he had acted out of fear for his family.
Prosecutors argued that he didn’t back up a defense of acting under duress. Merchant sought to persuade jurors he simply didn’t think the agents would believe him because they seemed to “think that I am some type of super-spy,” which he said he was “absolutely not.”
