MINISTER of Legal Affairs and Attorney General Basil Williams has re-emphasised that Guyana is not ‘blacklisted’, and that statements made by some Opposition members, prior to the country’s commendation by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) are nothing but erroneous and mischievous.Speaking on a National Communications Network (NCN) programme recently, Williams stated that “when I came back from meeting with FATF: the International Coordinating Review Group (ICRG) and the FATF Plenary, at the recently concluded (October) Meeting in Paris, France, I was shocked to read a headline, in the Guyana Times, actually declaring that Guyana still remains blacklisted.”

AG Williams explained that after his ensuing press conference and the issuance of his press release on what actually transpired at the meeting, he thought that matters would have been grasped, and that retraction would have been forthcoming.

He added that the Private Service Commission (PSC) in stating that it is disappointed with where Guyana is at the moment, “is suggestive of corroborating what the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) stated, but still is not reflective of the truth.”
Minister Williams, during the interview, reiterated that the Coalition Government “was actually applauded by FATF, for doing within four months, what the PPP/C government failed to do in 15 years.” He added that, “in that release, it was clearly stated that the APNU+AFC Government came in for high praise, from both institutions of FATF (Financial Action Task Force); the International Coordinating Review Group (ICRG), and the FATF Plenary, at the recently concluded Meeting in Paris, France.”

Williams said the ICRG adopted the Assessors’ report of its regional arm, the Americas Region Review Group (ARRG), which stated inter alia, that the main development in Guyana is the enactment of the Anti-Money Laundering/Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) Amendment Act 2015, which became enforceable on July 10, 2015.

Minister Williams repeated that “Guyana has demonstrated its commitment to comply with the action plan and is to be commended for having met most of the deadlines.” This praise was actually pronounced on the APNU+AFC Government, which was applauded by FATF, for doing within four months what the PPP/C government failed to do in 15 years.

The AG also alluded to an article in the Guyana Chronicle that appeared in December 2014, where the former AG had clearly stated that Guyana was not blacklisted, and at that time, the FATF Plenary did say that Guyana ‘will maintain its status quo’ in the Compliance Document. “Therefore, logically, the PPP/C is contradicting itself,” AG Williams argued.
And in this regard overall, Williams said Guyana is light years away from any kind of blacklisting. More so, that the current Government has manifested the political will to enforce all of FATF’s recommendations.

Revisiting occurrences under the previous regime, Mr. Williams reinforced the truth that “as soon as the governance of Guyana changed hands, the APNU+AFC Government’s first initiative was to pass the AML/CFT 2015 Amendment Bill, and also laid the requisite regulations in the House, and all of these are now law.”

The interview also revealed that the current Government was very concerned with the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), since the then government brought its version of the Bill, but the manner of the appointment of the Director of the FIU was most compromising, since that position was to be enacted by the then Minister of Finance. The AG noted too that this ‘appointed person’ could have only been fired by the President himself, and thus, “this would have meant that the whole exercise would have been a PPP/C’s.”

Williams said all of this has changed now and the FIU is totally independent “as it should be, without political interference and influence, and that is the main difference between them (PPP/C) and us, and so now accepted by FATF.”