Guyana will be sending a team to Miami, Florida later this month to evaluate recommendations coming out of an international review of its lack of compliance in addressing anti-money laundering deficiencies.
“We are going to report to Miami to a body established by the FATF (Financial Action Task Force) at the end of September where… we are expected to give an update on all of our efforts outside of the passing of the 2013 bill,” Attorney General Anil Nandlall, who is a member of the team, told Stabroek News.
He also revealed that the government is working on the advice of a consultant to develop a comprehensive country plan. He said that the consultant was a former FATF assessor and while the body did not mandate such work it had helped to facilitate the consultancy.
Nandlall said that currently a document was being prepared but it was in the preliminary stage as to what the course of action would be moving forward.
FATF in July informed the government that it would be executing a targeted review of Guyana’s Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) infrastructure. The review, the FATF said, would be conducted by the Americas Regional Review Group (ARRG) of the International Cooperation Review Group (ICRG).
Stabroek News asked Nandlall if an FATF team would be coming to Guyana as the last communication between the FATF and the Attorney General’s Office seemed to suggest this was the plan. He said that it appeared the work being done by the ARRG would not be done locally.
According to a letter sent in July from the FATF, signed by both ICRG co-chairs Daniel Glaser and Giuseppe Maresca, at the next meeting of the FATF in October, “the FATF will discuss the results of Guyana’s targeted review. If the FATF agrees with the recommendations in the targeted review, the FATF will then determine that a public statement regarding your jurisdiction is warranted to address the risks posed by deficiencies in your AML/CFT regime.”
The letter had stated that “at the recent June 2014 FATF Plenary, FATF members agreed that Guyana should be subject to further review with respect to its compliance with the international standards for AML/CFT.
This decision was made following up to the referral made by the Chair of the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF) received on 10 June 2014. The nomination was based on the lack of progress in addressing strategic deficiencies in Guyana’s AML/CFT regime, which resulted in a series of public statements issued by the CFATF, most recently on 29 May 2014.”
Nandlall said that the FATF would be taking a closer look at the non-legislative work, such as the establishment of the Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU), which is yet to be set up and the reforms made to the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU).
He said that the FATF “are looking at whatever progress we are making outside of the legislation and perhaps we can overcome the requisite hurdles without the necessity of passing the bill.”
He noted that the government had extracted portions from the 2009 anti-money laundering law and formulated guidelines that would need to be enforced at the level of the Home Affairs Ministry and other regulations. He noted that initially Guyana was also under the impression that a FATF team would be in Guyana and although the “format” of the targeted review has not manifested in how it was originally laid out, the outcome would be very similar, with government providing feedback on what was being done to advance the legislation and the regulations governing international anti-laundering laws.
Meanwhile, Joseph Harmon, APNU executive and member of the parliamentary select committee on the anti-laundering bill, stated that the opposition has been left out of any and all discussions in relation to the bill and the FATF requirements. He said that nothing has been circulated to the committee since the parliamentary recess, which commenced on August 10.
Harmon suggested that the government will most likely use the fact that the National Assembly was currently at recess for not disseminating any relevant documents.
However, he said this should not be the case. “They are continuing their ways. All this is happening within a framework of lawlessness. The government does what it feels like doing without referencing persons in the National Assembly and when they are confronted with obstacles is then they blame the opposition,” Harmon noted.
He said that the government has been known to create artificial deadlines and that the opposition has not once been contacted since the recess to discuss the targeted review process that the FATF co-chairs wrote the Attorney General about in July.
The parliamentary recess went into effect with the AML/CFT bill still in limbo. Although the amendment legislation has been drafted in compliance with CFATF recommendations, APNU and the AFC are withholding support until the Donald Ramotar administration agrees to demands for assent to be given to bills passed by them in the National Assembly as well as the set-up of the Public Procurement Commission. For the minority government, the support of the parliamentary opposition, which commands a one-seat majority in the National Assembly, is crucial for the amendment bill’s passage.
The two sides have been haggling over the bill for more than two years now amid threats of dire consequences for Guyana’s financial system.
