Despite all of the heated rhetoric and bluster from its leading officials, it is now crystal clear that it is the government which has to be held responsible for the delay in the process leading to the amendment of the anti-money laundering legislation to bring the country into compliance with international norms and to stave off measures targeting financial transactions originating here.
The very troubling question that now persists is whether the government deliberately set out to avoid implementing legislative changes to tighten the money-laundering laws until it became clear that no other option was available and that the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF) intended to embark on punitive measures.
A letter dated April 10, 2013 from the CFATF to President Ramotar, which set out the shortcomings of the government, was withheld until drawn to the attention of the public on May 20, 2013 by Opposition Leader, Mr Granger. The Opposition Leader was disturbed that the letter had been ducked particularly since the CFATF had “strongly encouraged” that it be shared with Mr Granger and the opposition. While he had every right to be disturbed, a reading of the letter makes clear that President Ramotar should have shared its contents immediately with the entire public as it represented a stark indictment of the PPP/C government’s failure to act over a long period and the risks that the country faced as a result of this. The President’s lame excuse provided to Mr Granger does not even begin to explain his error of omission in relation to other stakeholders.
After the diplomatic courtesies in the dispatch, the CFATF referred to a report generated by a High Level Mission on March 4th 2013. Up to this point, the HLM report had not been presented to local stakeholders as the basis for generating required amendments to the money laundering law. The CFATF admonished that the HLM report and two other documents should be taken account of in the plenary of the just concluded May 26-30 meeting in Nicaragua.
Noting the Guyana Government’s political commitment towards the identified deficiencies of the extant anti-money laundering legislation, the CFATF letter delivered one of several reservations over Georgetown’s intent.
“However, we must register our concern on the observations in the HLM Report that although the Government of Guyana has provided assurances that it would seek to enact as expeditiously as possible critical legislation that would positively impact a significant amount of deficiencies, it could not provide an estimated timeframe as to when this would in fact occur”.
This is surprising, as just weeks later in May, 2013, the government would begin a frenzied haranguing of the opposition to pass the bill when during the HLM mission in March, 2013 it was unable to provide even an estimated timeframe. Was this the posture of a government really intent on making the requisite changes to the law?
What made the insouciance of the government even more baffling was the warning in the letter that Guyana’s jeopardy had deepened since the Novem-ber 2012 plenary of the CFATF – which the public had not been apprised of – and it had moved to what was known as the Enhanced Follow up Stage.
The letter then again sounded the CFATF’s frustration. ”We would like to impress upon the Government of Guyana” that the CFATF International Cooperation Review Group (ICRG) is “adopting a very serious approach to ensuring that jurisdictions under its review are equally serious” in addressing the deficiencies of the anti-laundering law.
Another explicit warning followed in the letter. It said “The Government of Guyana must also take cognizance of the next stage in the Enhanced Follow up process” at the May meeting where counter-measures against Guyana by CFATF members would be considered.
The letter then lists the Attorney General, Mr Nandlall, Finance Minister, Dr Singh and Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr Luncheon as asserting that national efforts would be refocused to meet a deadline of April 30th, 2013 for the relevant legislation to be placed before Parliament. It was this deadline and not any local consensus that moved Mr Nandlall to table the bill on April 22, 2013 and no doubt only after the Office of the President had received the April 10th letter with the unequivocal language.
Even though the April 30th commitment had been given, the CFATF evinced skepticism and other concerns. It said that the commitment by the government officials had to be “juxtaposed with the experience of missed deadlines in February 2013. Additionally, this date fails to take into account the decision by the November 2012 Plenary that Guyana, as well as all other jurisdictions within the CFATF ICRG process, is required to become compliant with all the core and key recommendations by the May 2013 Plenary…” So even though Guyana has now been given a reprieve up to November, approval of the amendments is only one of a series of things to be accomplished.
The April 10, 2013 letter had even more sting. It said that there appeared to be little or no coordination or cooperation among the agencies interviewed with respect to the anti-money laundering regimes. Astoundingly, it said “This was most apparent with regard to the legislative agenda being pursued by the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) and the Bank of Guyana”. The FIU is the node for anti-money laundering efforts.
The letter then warned explicitly that not taking the required steps could be of “considerable importance to the regional and international reputation of Guyana and the operations of its financial sector. Furthermore, there will be significant financial cost to the country once Guyana is chosen for prima facie review by FATF ICRG”.
How could such dire warnings in April, based on a March visit, not immediately cause the government to summon all stakeholders to hammer out an agreement? This was not what President Ramotar did. He withheld the letter and this constitutes a breach of public trust. In accountable democracies there are consequences for such omissions, particularly as the letter in several paragraphs called for the involvement of the national community in the law amendment and compliance process. That would certainly take it far beyond Mr Granger to whom President Ramotar issued a most incredulous explanation for why the contents of the letter had not been divulged. The Private Sector Commission should review this letter to determine whether it needs to issue a position on the government’s handling of it.
The government now has to face the reality it has refused to address since November 2011 i.e. it doesn’t have a majority in Parliament but needs to have this bill passed. It is quite likely that at the Select Committee stage important amendments will be presented by the opposition which the government side will not agree with it. What will happen then?
There is a patent need to address money-laundering and its interconnections with unfair business competition, the drugs and weapons trade, organized crime and terrorist financing otherwise the country will face various risks. For reasons well known to itself, the PPP/C has neglected for the last 20 years to address this scourge with the result that drug lords like Mr Roger Khan roamed free for many years and spread death and destruction. There was a recent reminder of the dangers of this negligence in relation to no less than a former PNCR Member of Parliament Mr Abdul Kadir. His name was mentioned last week by an Argentine prosecutor in an allegation that the Iranian government had been behind the establishment of a terror network in Guyana and other parts of South America. Is this really so? The answer is no one knows except that there have been some disturbing occurrences such as the unexplained murder of an Iranian cleric here and the activities of Mr Kadir himself. Mr Kadir’s activities also led to his conviction in a New York court and a life sentence for terrorist plotting against the JFK Airport. There is clearly a significant body of information about his activities that the government and its anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing network, if it really existed, should have been aware of. This was clearly not the case. There has been a widely held view that the government remains adamantly opposed to effective anti-laundering legislation as it wants money to flow into the economy unfettered and is also under the influence of a new breed of entrepreneur. It is also argued that it doesn’t want a procurement commission as it wants control over where contracts go. This was given credence by a recent statement that the government wants an amendment to the procurement law.
The duplicity of the government has been exposed by its dealings with CFATF and it must now make good by addressing substantial amendments to the anti-money laundering law and take steps towards the activating of the architecture which would allow the interception of launderers and their ill-gotten gains and full prosecution.
