GUYANA’S Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Basil Williams, is currently leading a delegation at the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Plenary Meeting in Paris, France, in the capacity of Chairman of the Caribbean Financial Task Force (CFATF).
The FATF Plenary Meeting commenced on Sunday for a period of six days at the OECD Headquarters in Paris, France. This is the first meeting the attorney general is attending as Chair of CFATF.

The attorney general is leading a 15-member delegation. As Chair of CFATF, he is representing Guyana, while Celeste McCalla is representing Jamaica. Yvette Pierre, George Pickering and Christopher Brown are representing Bermuda; Yves Stimphat is representing Haiti; and Simon Jose Rangel Angarita, Claudia Yanez, Antonio Delgado, Hencar Castellanos and Jose Luis Genan are representing Venezuela.
FATF is an inter-governmental body that was established in 1989 with the responsibility of setting standards to counter money laundering, terrorist financing and proliferation financing.

The established standards are the FATF 40 recommendations, which the FATF and CFATF use to monitor their members level of compliance and implementation of measures against money laundering, counter-terrorist financing and proliferation financing.
This plenary meeting, which is the first of three planned for 2018, is intended to have all relevant parties present to discuss AML/CFT/PF issues. The CFATF as a FATF-Styled Regional Body (FSRB) is fully involved like other FSRBs in the work that is discussed during plenary.

“As the chairman of an FSRB, it is therefore important to remain visible and viable in the discussions that take place at the FATF plenary level. There is an expectation that the issues, their outcomes and requisite follow-thorough in relevant instances will be carried forward by the chair of each FSRB and their secretariats,” the attorney general explained in a statement.

For this plenary meeting, several topics critical to the CFATF region will be discussed, including changes to the FATF Methodology, which impacts the requirements that countries must meet to be compliant; counter-terrorism operational plans and beneficial ownership, de-risking and countries with strategic deficiencies as part of the ICRG process.
The FATF meets three times per year – in February, June and October.