Anti Money Laundering Bill Impasse…Guyana loses chance to take a passed Bill to FATF forum – Luncheon
With the compromise between the government and the combined opposition over passage of its Anti Money Laundering
Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr. Roger Luncheon
legislation going nowhere, the opportunity for Guyana to present a passed Bill and positive report to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) plenary next week has been lost.
This is according to Head of the Presidential Secretariat (HPS), Dr. Roger Luncheon, during his weekly post Cabinet press briefing.
Dr. Luncheon said that for Guyana, the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF) and FATF compliant Anti Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) Bill is necessary if it is to exit the blacklisting track that it currently is in.
However, “efforts by the government to get the Parliamentary Special Select Committee (PSSC) as an instrument of the Parliamentary political parties to timely consider newer perspectives appear unavailing,” said Luncheon.
He said that Government has been attempting to engage the combined opposition (A Partnership for National Unity- APNU— and Alliance for Change –AFC) with newer initiatives but those meetings have yet to take place.
According to Luncheon, “The sad reality is that the June 19 sitting of the National Assembly would not be graced by a report from the PSSC that is considering the amended AML Bill, any expectations therefore of a Bill that could be enacted, a Bill that could be assented to at this or subsequent to the June 19 sitting has essentially been lost.”
Significantly, Luncheon said that with the Bill not making it to the June 19, sitting of the National Assembly the opportunity of Guyana appearing with CFTAF legislation to the FATF plenary is also lost.
“It goes without saying that whatever it was worth, that loss is going to contribute to a heightening of blacklisting of Guyana and its financial sector, a failure of enactment of legislation and those pronounced effects, events on Guyana and its financial sector,” said Dr. Luncheon.
Asked whether an emergency meeting could be held before Parliament convenes to get the legislation fast tracked, Dr. Luncheon replied, “We have been belaboring ourselves for months and months about meeting deadlines. I think when the history of round two, if the multilateral evaluation mechanism of the money laundering legislation is written, I think it would be replete with those instances where expectations of meeting deadlines have been dashed by the reality of opposition performances and actions at the level of the National Assembly.”
He added that determination for the achievement of the current deadline has to be premised on the “basis of our experiences whether such is a realistic ambition.”
Guyana has already been blacklisted regionally by the Caribbean Financial Action Taskforce (CFATF) and recently when that body reviewed the country, it was found to be still non compliant and as such was referred to its parent body FATF, which could possibly blacklist Guyana Internationally.
CFATF had at its recent review of Guyana opted to introduce even more sanctions on Guyana. It issued a warning to its 27 member-countries to consider Guyana to be a risk to the international financial system.
The regional body advised the implementation of further counter measures to be taken against Guyana in order to protect financial systems from the “ongoing money laundering and terrorist financing risks emanating from Guyana.”
The combined opposition has expressed a willingness to give support to the AML legislation to avoid a greater tier of blacklisting and put in place steps to reverse the current local blacklisting, but that support is conditional on Government acceding to constitutional requirements that they are advancing.
These include the operationalising of a Public Procurement Commission (AFC) and required assent of the four local government Bills that were passed by the APNU.
