…AG urges state prosecutors to sharpen skills to tackle financial crimes

ATTORNEY General (AG), Basil Williams has stressed the need for state prosecutors to be ready to tackle matters pertaining to money laundering and other financial crimes, since there have been problems relating to conviction.

“For far too long focus has been on prosecuting traditional crimes; it is time to pay attention to developing the requisite skills to prosecute corruption cases and financial crime,” posited the AG at the launch of a three-day trial advocacy training for prosecutors at the Marriott Hotel on Thursday.

The programme has been organised by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Chamber with funding from the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Bureau of the US under the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative, justice sector assistance programme.
Although areas have been outlined for coverage during the programme, Williams urged the state prosecutors to recognise the need to learn about money laundering and other specialised crimes. He informed them that state prosecutors must become equipped to ensure there are proper and successful prosecutions.

The AG believes that the training programme is timely, especially since state prosecutors need to be trained to deal with and know about the elements of money laundering offences and so forth.

“Criminal prosecution is one of the main pillars of the justice system and without successful prosecutions the system will fail,” said Williams, adding that there is a need for effective state prosecutors. Aside from financial crimes, he said given the dependency of societies all over the world on Information and Communication Technology (ICT), prosecutors must be prepared to handle cyber-crimes.

The cyber-crime bill was read in the National Assembly and sent to the Parliamentary Select Committee to be reviewed. AG Williams said the bill was completed in the committee and will go for passage in the National Assembly soon. He believes that the training programme will equip the prosecutors with the skills to deal with such matters.
One of the facilitators said the programme is an advanced criminal trial advocacy workshop which is geared at building the institutional capacity and skills of the justice sector professionals.

Trial advocacy is defined as the branch of knowledge concerned with making attorneys and other advocates more effective in trial proceedings. The training will be conducted by Project Director, Doris Cheng and her team of highly skilled members from the National Institute of Trial Advocacy (NITA)–leading provider of legal advocacy skills training-.
Cheng said the programme consists of teaching, plenary sessions and hands-on exercises

that will expose participants to skill-based training which is expected to help them execute their role as prosecutors. Chief Justice, Roxanne George Wiltshire and DPP, Shalimar Ali-Hack encouraged state prosecutors to make use of the training but to keep in mind that effective prosecution is also a human rights issue.