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Select Committee provides half baked Bill in National Assembly – Ramjattan
The Alliance for Change (AFC) at a Press Conference, yesterday at the Side Walk Café on Middle Street, reiterated its concerns with the Anti Money Laundering Legislation.
“[Tuesday] the PPP members of the Select Committee saw it fit to close the work of the Select Committee and indicated that it would send all the recommendations thus far deliberated on to the National Assembly the larger body,” Ramjattan said.
With the Bill now going to the National Assembly the concerns and recommendations that the opposition wanted to be addressed have not been addressed.
Leader of the AFC Khemraj Ramjattan
Ramjattan said that indeed that would be the case since AFC “wanted a strengthening of the forfeiture clauses, we wanted a strengthening of the Financial Intelligence Unit and that now can’t be placed in there. We wanted to hear orally from the Bar Association of Guyana which recently sent in its submission; all of this now have been literally clipped and so it is still a half baked deliberation.”
Ramjattan added, “The Alliance for Change maintains its position that it will not change from its demand of having a Procurement Commission before we support the Anti Money Laundering Bill.”
The AFC leader then announced that “the anti money laundering Bill and Public Procurement Commission (PPC) are things that are symbiotic, the relationship, both go together. You can’t have money launderers to a certain extent if you do not have corruption with public procurement matters and so a procurement commission is going to in a sense make negligible in relation to procurement in the procurement sphere less corruption, less profiteering, so it’s going to be a good thing that can enhance the Anti Money Laundering Bill.”
“So just to make it quite clear, there is no shifting from the position, so whatever it is the People’s Progressive Party members in the Select Committee will send up to the larger National Assembly body we, the AFC, will not support unless there is the establishment and the operationalization of the procurement commission.
“We will have to say very sorry to those businessmen who have been trying to lobby us to and persuade us to pass it without linking it to the procurement commission,” Ramjattan elucidated.
Speaking on concerns raised by the banking and private sector as to the international pressure that would be placed on them should this Bill not be enacted, Ramjattan said, “We want our supporters and non supporters to know and appreciate that this crazy spin being given by these persons as if remittances will be halted, that’s not true.
“Remittance firms that are reputable with the Banks overseas are hardly going to have a problem. Those that the international banking community felt however have suspicions about their monies going overseas are the ones that are going to have the problems.”
He added, “It’s going to be very much to the detriment of those who apparently have no legitimate business in Guyana but sending out huge sums, they are the ones that will be caught. This government, through the Financial Intelligence Unit as set up in Guyana under the 2009 law, has not been doing that. We are of the opinion that a good might come out of the fact that there is now going to be international scrutiny and penalties if the government does not want a Public Procurement Commission.”
“The other point that we wish to make is that indeed if the government is so concerned about the business architect being delayed and having challenges and constraints now that the Anti Money Laundering Bill will not be passed and that is a sword of Damocles over its head simply because we would like to see the procurement commission, then why not establish and operationalize the PPC,” Ramjattan elucidated.
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