The Private Sector Commission (PSC) yesterday said that it was shocked to learn that the State Assets Recovery Unit (SARU) is apparently involved in a money laundering investigation of a financial institution since its responsibility is to recover state assets.
It has called on SARU to state its mandate so as to give clarity to its role and questioned why the Finance Intelligence Unit (FIU) or the Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU) were not the agencies undertaking the said investigation.
“The Private Sector Commission (PSC) is alarmed to learn that the State Assets Recovery Unit (SARU) is involved in a money laundering investigation of a major financial institution as per a headline in the Kaieteur News of Wednesday January 6, 2016. It is our understanding that the mandate of the Unit is to investigate and recover assets belonging to the state” a statement from the PSC read. The report referred to a matter involving Republic Bank (Guyana) Limited.
The PSC said too that it was also aware that SARU is operating outside of any known laws in Guyana and that it was only aware of the role of the FIU, SOCU and the Bank of Guyana in anti-money laundering investigations.
The PSC said that it believes that if what was reported is true then that development will have a significant negative impact on foreign and local investors’ confidence.
SARU’s head Dr Clive Thomas could not be contacted yesterday by Stabroek News for comment but in past reports he has acknowledged the speedy need for legislation to enable the unit to properly conduct its work.
Republic Bank (Guyana) Limited has since rebuffed the Kaieteur News article, saying that any assertion that it has been engaged in money laundering activities is false. “Republic Bank (Guyana) Limited rejects the assertion that it is engaged in money laundering activities. The Bank has a rich history of integrity spanning over 175 years and views any suggestion of this nature to be malicious, libelous and unfounded,” the bank said in a statement.
“In light of the article which seeks to tarnish the Bank’s reputation and question its adherence to sound banking principles, Republic Bank (Guyana) Limited will take all necessary steps, including reviewing legal options to address these false allegations, to protect its reputation and the interests of all stakeholders,” it added.
The Bank of Guyana also issued a statement saying that it had investigated the matter referred to in the Kaieteur News report and found no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of Republic Bank.
Fiat
Meanwhile, former Attorney-General Anil Nandlall yesterday joined the PSC in the call for SARU’s specific fiat to be made public. “In light of recent disclosures it is incumbent upon the government to make public the mandate, the remit and terms of reference of SARU. The nation was led to believe that SARU was a unit to advise the government on the recovery of assets of the state as its name implies. It is undisputed that SARU has no investigative powers. Now we are made to understand that SARU is delving into the private confidential financial affairs of citizens who are wholly unconnected and whose businesses are wholly unconnected to the state. The population needs to know what exactly the remit of this organisation is,” Nandlall told Stabroek News.
He said that he believes that the SARU head speaks with prejudice. “The head of this unit continues to make highly prejudicial, scandalous and reckless public remarks and disclosures, in respect of information which is said to him, and I say wrongly so. This is because he is not entitled to those information, which compromises and will cause irreparable damage to any impartial and professional investigation which may subsequently have to be done into any of these matters by the duly authorised investigative agencies,” Nandlall charged.
Nandlall said from what he has learned the transaction referred to in the Kaieteur News article was one which involved a private citizen and had nothing to do with the state. He believed that an impression had been created in the report that the minister referred to in the article was one from the then ruling People’s Progressive Party/Civic when it was actually one of the then opposition members of parliament now turned minister.
Nonetheless, he said that in any event even if money laundering was suspected the legally authorised agencies that should have been involved were “the FIU, SOCU, certainly not SARU”.
“SOCU was established to investigate reports and information designated to it by the FIU. That is SOCU’s only mandate. Of course as a result of other recent incidents it is unclear what SOCU’s remit is now and the government must make a full and frank disclosure in relation to the remit of both SARU and SOCU because they are two agencies whose operations constitute an encroachment on the constitutional, fundamental rights of the citizens of this country and they may seem to be violating a number of other laws,” Nandlall stressed.
Nandlall statement on SOCU was a reference to the disastrous intelligence operation on December 30th on Carifesta Avenue that resulted in three deaths.
In an interview with Stabroek News in December, Thomas had said, “What we are trying to do is build from scratch an organisation designed to prevent the stealing of public assets now, and in the future as well as to capture and return some of the property that was stolen in the past, the recent past. So we have a two-fold obligation. To do that we need to establish the capacity to make that pursuit and that means building up our strength in many different [ways] field, organisational, legally, personnel, resources-wise, contacts overseas and all that sort of thing… it is an evolving global structure of which we are part that we are trying to build a net.”
He emphasised that going forward, the unit needs to be a fully independent agency being propelled by autonomous forces to ensure it can pursue investigations free of favour.
“I hope to get it done as soon as possible. I would have liked to get it done yesterday, so it is the most pressing need that we have now because we don’t want to rely on other agencies to take action, we want to be able to do our own execution,” Thomas said of the pressing need to introduce a bill that will transform the unit into an agency.
