After almost two hours of heated debate, government last evening passed the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) (Amendment) Bill despite pleas from the opposition that it should not be rushed and ought to be sent to a Select Committee.
“Rather than bring a piecemeal bill after bill after bill since all of these things are already stacked against us, we could have brought one singular bill accumulating all of the deficiencies and all of the outstanding recommendations and bring them one time to this Parliament and pass it and we could have entered the fourth round (of international review) that he (Attorney General Basil Williams) is speaking about”, former Attorney General and opposition MP Anil Nandlall told the House.
During his hour-long presentation he continuously stressed that what is required to approach this issue holistically is located within the Chambers of the Attorney General including a Task Force and personnel who are well acquainted with what is required.
The bill, which was finalized without the input of the opposition, was published in the Official Gazette on April 15 and represents the second time in less than a year that amendments to the law are being taken before the National Assembly. Two rounds of consultations on a draft bill were held.
The government also voted down a motion brought by opposition chief whip Gail Teixeira to have the Bill taken before a Special Select Committee.
Nandlall during his presentation pleaded for the Bill to be taken to a Select Committee where it should go in accordance with the parliamentary rules, practices and procedures.
“The business of the parliament should be done within the precincts of the Parliament”, he reasoned.
Nandlall charged that the opposition will not sacrifice, compromise or ostracize, “the parliamentary process, the institutions of this House through its various committees and resort to some office outside of this Parliament to do consultations”. He strongly rejected comments by Williams that he had refused to attend two consultation though invited. He explained that he could not do so in the absence of the recommendations from FATF and CFATF which he had requested from the AG’s chambers.
He shot down assertions made by Williams that the PPP/C is to blame for the problems Guyana is facing with respect to AML/CFT. “The whole world knows that the 11th Parliament was controlled by a one-seat majority enjoyed by the opposition and they rejected two bills that were brought here by the PPP/C government”, he said to shouts of “remind them” and cross-heckling between the two sides of the House.
Nandlall said that Khemraj Ramjattan as leader of the AFC, and now Minister of Public Security, tossed aside the Bills, stressing the need instead for a Public Procurement Commission which is yet to be put in place by the new government. “No support for the Bill until we have a Procurement Commission”, was how Nandlall remembered Ramjattan’s view of the situation.
“They (the people) will never forget that we had the statements…from the Private Sector Commission calling upon them to support the law. From the Diplomatic Community, a petition came here and they rejected it from the Private Sector Commission. The Caricom heads of government issued a statement. The Caricom Secretariat issued a statement calling upon them to support the Bill…the religious community issued several statements calling upon them to pass the Bill”, he stressed said before calling Williams’s comments, “shallow and time wasting”.
“Nobody buys that kind of thing. It’s cheap”, he said.
Nandlall said that had the government of the day had an understanding of what was happening with regards to this issue when it took office, it would be realized that Guyana was already deficient.
Nandlall told the House that Guyana is stuck in the third round of international review because someone cannot understand how to put all of the outstanding things together and bring them once to Parliament.
It was pointed out that everything necessary to do this including a Task Force is at the Attorney General’s office.
“All could have been done from May 15 to now. One year they have had control of the Parliament and still you can’t get off the backlog (the outstanding deficiencies)? All you have to do is to bring the Bills to the Parliament”, he stressed.
He said that the recommendations are grouped into administrative and legislative. He said that while the PPP/C was in government it could not satisfy the legislative requirements because of the one seat majority held by the opposition. With regards to the administrative deficiencies he said that when the PPP/C left office, all the administrative requirements were satisfied. He said that all that was left to be done was the establishment of an enforcement arm of a Special Organized Crime Unit (SOCU). He told the House that was done and as such administratively everything was accomplished.
“They have the legislative power and they still can’t pass the requisite legislation but they have now put us in default administratively because we no longer have a FIU (Financial Intelligence Unit)”, he said adding that the country is not moving forward but rather backsliding.
Nandlall said that they had urged the government to put a system in place which would cater for any delays and still allow the FIU to function. “…they rejected our submission so what you have when you pass this law, they outlawed the formal structure and they brought in a new structure that they now trying to full so there is a void that they can’t fill”, he said.
Nandlall said that there is a FIU in the law but in reality there is no appointment and “most importantly the heart and soul of (it) the director is not there”. He stated that it is the FIU that is the axis around which the whole AML/CFT apparatus rotates.
Turning his attention to the Bill, Nandlall said that the clauses which represent more than 80% of the Bill confer responsibility on the FIU and the Director. He read extensively from the Bill as he made his points.
Nandlall pointed out that the Bill removes the discretionary powers of the Court to freeze assets in cases of money laundering.
He said that the Bill deguts a judge of “judicial flexibility and is now performing a robotic function but grants an order freezing (assets)”.
PPP failed
Williams told the House that the magnitude of the failure of the then PPP/C Government in implementing “an efficacious AML/CFT regime is revealed on a proper examination of the FATF and CFATF”.
He said that the Government inherited a situation of great disadvantage to fight against money launderers and an even greater reluctance to counter the financing of terrorism.
“Mr. Speaker the PPP/C Government had continually failed to remedy the many deficiencies in the Action Plans it had agreed to with both the CFATF and FATF in or around 2011 and 2014 respectively”, he pointed out.
He said that to date Guyana featured in three of four CFATF Public Statements published to date; Public Statement of May 30, 2013 issued in Managua, Nicaragua, Public Statement of November 20, 2013 issued in Freeport, Bahamas and Public Statement of May 29, 2014 issued in Miami, Florida, USA.
The AG pointed out that the first statement identified Guyana as a jurisdiction with strategic AML/CFT deficiencies that has not made sufficient progress in addressing the deficiencies or has not complied with its action plan developed with the CFATF to address the deficiencies. The CFATF called on its members to consider the risks arising from the deficiencies associated with Guyana.
The second statement, he said also identified Guyana as a jurisdiction with strategic AML/CFT deficiencies that has not made sufficient progress in addressing the deficiencies or has not complied with its action plan developed with the CFATF to address these deficiencies while he third statement identified Guyana as a jurisdiction with strategic AML/CFT deficiencies that has not made sufficient progress in addressing the deficiencies or has not complied with the Action Plan developed with the CFATF to address these deficiencies.
A fourth Public Statement was published in Trinidad and Tobago on November 25, 2015, Williams said adding that Suriname was the sole country featured therein.
He said that to date The APNU+AFC Government has reduced the many recommendations that have been unimplemented to one; the latter has now been addressed in the current AML/CFT (Amendment) Bill 2016, upon whose passage Guyana can apply to exit the FATF review process.
“In relation to the CFATF the situation is worse. The Government found a plethora of Recommendations the PPP/C Government failed to implement since the publication of Guyana’s Third Round Mutual Evaluation Report on July 25, 2011. In that MER Guyana was rated Compliant and Largely Compliant in only 6 of the 40 + 9 Recommendations on which we were assessed. Guyana was found to be deficient in all the other recommendations”, he told the House.
He informed that CFATF has since been publishing Guyana’s Follow-up Reports (twice annually) in which these deficiencies are continuously identified.
“However, having entered Government in May 2015, we were unable to attend the meeting in which the “8th Follow Up Report” was reviewed by CFATF in the same month”, he said adding that government will for the first time engage the CFATF on the status of our compliance with the remedying of its deficiencies in the Follow Up Reports which the PPP/C Government failed to do.
In a letter dated January 14, 2016 the CFATF wrote Guyana informing that as per its 9th Follow-Up Report one Core and five Key recommendations were still outstanding which precluded Guyana from applying to exit the Follow-Up process in May 2016.
He told the House that the person performing the functions of Director of the FIU has confirmed that to exit the CFATF Follow-Up process, “Guyana only has to satisfy these five core and key recommendations, notwithstanding other recommendations have not been fully addressed.
“What is mind boggling is that since 2011, twice a year they met with CFATF and this last government resolutely refused to comply with those recommendations and they have the temerity to try and mislead this nation that we are not doing anything” he said before saying that the government has been working hard to meet the recommendations which have been outlined.
He said that it is important that Guyana exist the third round as “the fourth round looms and as I said we have shown the political will to implement the recommendations…and we are gonna continue to try and save this country after all these years of neglect”.
