There is something called hoodwinking

Nov 17, 2013 Features / Columnists, My Column

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I cannot help but conclude that people are intolerant of the views of others, especially of those views that do not coincide with those held by the other person. I find that it is not a case of people attempting to reason and therefore try to analyse the other person’s views; it is simply a case of discarding those conflicting views.
I was surprised that the political opposition did not make an effort to have the anti-money laundering Bill in place for whatever that Bill was worth. For one, there would have been an immediate investigation of the possible suspects. Today, there is precious little one can do, except monitor the suspicious transactions.
But then again, as one person later said to me, having the law in place guarantees nothing.
“Adam, we have the trafficking In Persons legislation and had it not been for international pressure nothing would have happened.” I acknowledged the point, even as I recognized that those who are bent on protecting people from the scourge are running into problems with the very lawmakers who are supposed to protect them.
One woman spoke of two police ranks actually threatening her. Another managed to get two policemen charged with demanding sex from the very people they were supposed to prevent being trafficked. There are laws governing taxation. I see scores of tall buildings shooting up in and around Georgetown. A casual check revealed that the Guyana Revenue Authority does not even know the names of the people erecting the structures.
When I asked a GRA staff member, the man simply said that the person may be paying taxes on his least profitable enterprise just to maintain a public perception.  I then asked about the GRA moving to the site of the construction to conduct a tax inspection. That was when the person said that they do not have enough staff to go chasing after everything.
This is likely to be the very argument that would be made if and when Guyana gets the anti-money laundering Bill. Then I began to think about this new investigative unit that Cabinet sees as being important in the wake of the failure to pass the anti-money laundering Bill. This unit, to be named the Special Operations Crimes Unit (SOCU), will be headed by the Police Commissioner.
I thought that it was a good thing that the acronym was not SOCA, because the country would have concluded that the government was merely having a party with the nation. This body would have to be equipped with specially trained financial investigators. I then heard that they would be working with the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU).
If that is to be the case, I am left to wonder at the inability of the FIU to spot even one suspicious transaction. Surely, if Adam Harris walks into a bank and deposits $3 million, that would be a suspicious transaction. It might be a legitimate transaction because someone from overseas sent US$15,000 to begin payments on a house. But it is still suspicious.
I know of a few cases like this, yet the FIU never detected any suspicious transaction. The commercial banks must have provided the information. What is there to effect a change in this situation? Perhaps the FIU might find it so much easier to pass everything to the SOCU.
But the skeptic that I am, I could not help but recall that the Guyana Elections Commission discovered what the officials considered an attempt at fraud by way of multiple registrations. The information was passed to the police, who could not even mount an investigation. No one was ever prosecuted.  SOCU may very well land in the same boat.
However, I am certain that any probe would have uncovered a large extent of money laundering.  Everyone I know contends that the structures going up is a reflection of how much drug money there is in the system. They say that with the announcement that there must be anti-money laundering legislation, people are making desperate efforts to legitimize their money.
They take the cash and they go to the various manufacturing firms. They pay cash and they take home the material which they use in their construction. In the end, the money becomes clean. The bank would be reluctant to question Gafoor’s or Toolsie Persaud about any deposit the company makes.
There was also another bit of nonsense that I failed to grasp and it had to do with the introduction of the $5,000 note. The police, the private sector and just about everyone, except the government  wants people to use plastic—credit cards, debit cards, and even cheques.
Earlier this year, or it might have been late last year, when asked about the need for the new note, the Deputy Governor of the Bank said that it had been more than a decade since Guyana had a new currency.
It has been decades since the United States considered having a currency note larger than the $100. And even that the great United States is thinking about phasing out. Some stores do not take them. But Guyana has to be different, although as the people from the Finance Ministry said, the new note has nothing to do with inflation.
In my book the new note allows people with cash that they cannot take to the bank, to use less space to store this money. And it also aids the criminals since they would have to escape with less load and even more cash.
Is the government on the side of the criminals?

 

 

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