…during life of 10th Parliament

CABINET Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon told the audience at his weekly post-Cabinet press briefing at the Office of the President in Georgetown, yesterday, that the administration is committed to having a Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF)-endorsed amendment bill enacted during the Tenth Parliament. In fact, he said, the administration is pursuing this initiative.

Attorney General (AG) and Minister of Legal Affairs, Mr Anil Nandlall, and Head of the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), Mr Paul Ghir, represented Guyana at the CFATF meeting in the Bahamas on November 18. The AG reported to Cabinet that there was a significant presence of extra regional interests and stakeholders who are involved in the international circles of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), according to Dr Luncheon.
“The AG informed Cabinet about the decision made by the plenary, and the basis for that decision — a decision that permitted the blacklisting of Guyana.
“On the issue of the Government of Guyana’s reaction to the conclusion of the plenary of CFATF, the AG and Cabinet saw little option but to return the rejected anti money laundering amendment bill to Parliament at an early opportunity. Our interest is enactment of the amended anti money laundering bill.
“The basis for blacklisting was our failure to enact that bill, which represented as much as 98 percent of the outstanding recommendations that the mutual evaluation mechanism had shown up on the review of our discharge of our obligations under the FATF process,” Dr Luncheon informed.
Meanwhile, Government would be exploring avenues, including a consensus position with at least one of the two Opposition parties in Parliament, to retable the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering of the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT)Bill in Parliament as soon as is reasonably possible.
Nandlall recently disclosed that the main objective is that the amendments which have been rejected by the Opposition ought to be passed before February 2014, so that Guyana will no longer be a country with identified deficiencies in its AML/CFT legislation.
“If we are able to pass this Bill — if not before February, then by May, 2014 — Guyana can extricate itself from this list that it finds itself on, and we can be restored to some level of normalcy,” Minister Nandlall has said. He stressed that failing to do this would take Guyana onto a very advanced stage in terms of failure to comply with the policies and guidelines set by the AMLCFT regulatory bodies; and Guyana’s position would be handed over to the FATF International Cooperation Review Group (FATF ICRG) which would then take charge of Guyana.
Commenting on the future prospects of the Bill, the minister stressed that Government cannot retable the bill in Parliament on its own volition. At least one opposition party has to co-operate, because the entire Standing Orders would have to be amended to allow the bill to go back to the Parliament.
Additionally, Government would not want to retable the bill unless it can be assured that it would receive support for its passage, because the country can find itself in even greater difficulty if the Parliament rejects the bill a second time.

(By Telesha Ramnarine)