GBTI cannot make up its own rules

Apr 10, 2013 Letters

Dear Editor,
I am responding to Mrs. Collette Lyken-Ramdial’s letter (KN 03/04/13) which attempts to answer my charges about a most unfair business practice at her bank. Her response was rather juvenile, elusive and self-contradicting to the point where a sane observer might suspect acute comprehension deficit.
To aid understanding and illuminate her postulations, I will restate the gist of my letter with extreme rural simplicity. I raised no objections to the policy for requiring two forms of ID; that is a reasonable policy and a fair request of your customer. What is revolting is the policy to reject statutory state documents as proof of address simply because you do not like the process the state uses to acquire the information.
GBTI cannot make up its own rules that repudiate, ignore or apply private discretionary powers to facilities created by statute.
a. A driver’s license is required by law (Motor Vehicle and Road Traffic Act (MVRTA) Sec. 25) to contain the address, signature and photo of the holder and it is valid in its entirety for three years.
b. MVRTA Chapter 51:02 mandates a certificate of registration for a motor vehicle in which there is an address of the owner among other information
c. MVRT Regulation 15 provides for an annual Licence for a motor vehicle containing the address of the owner
d. Then there is a Certificate of Registration for Taxpayer ID Number (Income Tax Amendment Act # 15, 2006) which contains a TIN, Name and Address
e. Business Names Registration Act Chapter 90.05 provides for a certificate of registration containing the name and address of the owner
The agencies involved in the preparation and issue of those documents are the Deeds Registry, Guyana Revenue Authority and the Guyana Police Force. By rejecting the information contained on those documents is equivalent to usurping the authority of those agencies and setting up your own parallel state apparatus.
If they continue in that trend what would prevent GBTI or any other private organization from rejecting a name change as stated on a Deed Poll? The laws of Guyana do not give management and staff of GBTI the luxury to highhandedly discriminate on which pieces of information they will reject while the documents are still valid.
This is so even if GBTI does not agree with the process used to operationalize the law. The bank should lobby the government and the National Assembly to tweak the provisions of the law to block the loopholes and expel that which is causing discomfort.
One cannot just sit around a corporate boardroom table and create private legislation that prohibits and/or renders invalid certain parts of these documents that have their groundings in statute. GBTI was willing to accept a driver’s licence for ID purposes but not as proof of address. That is counter intuitive and amounts to GBTI being a law unto its own self.
My contention is that these documents on their own are valid in their entirety and are materially sufficient to meet the requirement of the Financial Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism Act of 2009, as a proof of address.
But it is a very dangerous indulgence for a private entity to treat legally established document with contempt, it sets the stage for anarchy and a failed state where the law of “to each his own” becomes the order of the day.
Further, how can a private corporate entity deny a person the right to make and tender an affidavit of oath? An offer to tender a sworn affidavit that the address stated on the official documents is the one where I currently reside and where the bank can send regular correspondence, the bank refused this and insisted that I get a utility bill or something that came through the post.
Can you imagine where we are going as a country if this type of corporate pontiff begins to rear its ugly head all over Guyana?
Lenno Craig

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GBTI cannot make up its own rules

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