-AG assures Guyana AML/CFT regime stronger

ATTORNEY General Basil Williams has rubbished claims by Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo that Guyana is not yet out of the woods in regard to its anti-money laundering compliance.

Deeming the former president paranoid, the AG says it was the Bharrat Jagdeo government that had plunged this country into a “black hole”, and he assured that this country would not wait until the last minute to put its house in order for the fourth round of assessment, due in 2022.

JAGDEO’S TAKE
Speaking at a news conference on Thursday, Jagdeo had said: “If we lull ourselves into a sense of false security, then we are going to repeat a lot of the mistakes made by the Attorney General, and we are going to put major sectors of our economy in jeopardy, particularly the economic sector. I (saw) the AG statement to Parliament; it is not a report on progress…it is an admission that what was said to the country — that we are free and clear — that it is not so.”

Saying there is still a lot of work to be done, Jagdeo said: “We may very well find that we are not compliant with applying this Act.”

The Opposition Leader also told the news conference that while Guyana has, in fact, concluded its third-round of evaluation, it was now subject to a fourth round of evaluation, which would entail more rigorous compliance measures, including the actual prosecution of money-laundering offences.

“What will happen is (that), under this review, they will be required to go after actual cases,” Jagdeo said. He added that the fourth round of evaluations relates to technical compliance, and not simply adhering to recommendations made; and that would be difficult to attain. “We may very well find that we are not compliant in applying this (AML/CFT) Act when we are again evaluated. We still have a lot of work to do,” he opined.

AG RESPONDS
But responding on Friday, the AG said Jagdeo is again misleading the nation. He said what the APNU+AFC government had inherited was a country that was “tied up…and we were able to free this country in one year. They had us bogged down since 2010.”

Williams said the concerns now being expressed by Jagdeo were addressed when he (Williams) came back from the Caribbean Action Task Force meeting recently. “It’s nothing new! I said it when I returned: that we have to prosecute people; so I don’t know what Mr. Jagdeo is trying to say.”

Williams argued that the PPP does not want to acknowledge the successes of this government, “so they are clouding this issue. We have been freed up…instead of saying congratulations they are trying to hide it.”

PREVIOUSLY STATED
At a press conference on October 26, Williams had told reporters that Guyana must now produce more convictions to show sufficient progress on effectiveness.

“Guyana cannot be complacent as the fourth round Mutual Evaluation beckons. The test there is whether Guyana would have shown “sufficient progress on effectiveness; for example, having more convictions for offences of money laundering, terrorist financing and the purloining of state assets,” the AG had said.

Asked how equipped the government was to go after persons suspected of money laundering based on the new development, Williams said the first money laundering Act was passed in 2000, but no one was ever investigated or charged.

“Between 2000 and the time we took office, no one was ever prosecuted for any money-laundering offence in Guyana. It is only when we took office (that) people were not just investigated, but they were also charged and taken to court.”

Williams said a lot of those cases have not resulted in convictions, and in some situations, money as well as gold bars were returned. However, he explained that this will not be sufficient in the fourth round. “In the fourth round, we will have to show effectiveness and that we are making FATF report.”

To back up his case, Williams released copies of the two letters written to him by both CFATF and FATF. Juan Manuel Vega-Serrano, President of the FATF, in a letter dated October 28, 2016, wrote Williams informing him of the discussion at the FATF meeting on 16-21 October 2016 in Paris, France in regard to Guyana’s anti-money and combating the financing of the terrorism (AML/CFT) regime. Vega-Serrano also thanked Williams for his attendance at the meeting, “where you reiterated your government’s commitment to continue implementing AML/CFT reforms.”

The FATF President told the AG that the organisation discussed the result of the on-site visit that was undertaken by FATF representatives of the International Cooperation Review Group (ICRG) to Guyana on 15 and 16 September 2016.

“The FATF welcomed the significant actions by Guyana to address the strategic deficiencies in its AML/CFT regime, including the adequately criminalising money laundering and terrorist financing; establishing and implementing adequately criminialsing procedures for the confiscation of assets related to money laundering; establishing and implementing an adequate legal framework for identifying, tracing, and freezing terrorist assets; establishing a fully operational and effectively functioning financial intelligence unit; establishing effective measures for customer due diligence and enhancing financial transparency; strengthening suspicious transaction reporting requirements; and implementing an adequate supervisory framework,” Vega-Serrano told the AG in his letter.

He said it was on the basis of the on-site visit report that the FATF decided it would no longer monitor Guyana under the ICRG process. “The FATF recommended that Guyana continue working with CFATF to further improve its AML/CFT system and strengthen compliance with international standards.”

For their part, CFATF indicated that the November 2016 Plenary in Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Island, recognised that the jurisdiction has made significant progress in addressing the deficiencies identified during the Third round of Mutual Evaluation conducted by the CFATF, and has exited the following up process. The organisation stated that Guyana has addressed the deficiencies identified in the mutual Evaluation Report adopted by the CFATF Council of Ministers on 25 July 2011, and has exited the follow-up process of the third round of Mutual Evaluations of CFATF.

The CFATF said Guyana enacted several pieces of key legislation, comprising statutes and regulation in 2015. These legislative measures significantly improved the level of compliance in the Ninth Follow-Up, in which Guyana had addressed all issues in the sixteen key and core Recommendations originally rated PC/NA, and a significant number of other similarly rated recommendations in the Tenth follow-Up Report. By then Guyana was recommended to apply to exit the follow-up prosecco once it had exited the FATF ICRG process.