Anti-Money Laundering legislation amendment…APNU increases ‘stop-and-search’ limit to $10M

Mar 05, 2014 News

By Dwijendra Rooplall
A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) in a public missive announced yesterday that it has increased the limit to its amendment for the Anti-Money Laundering legislation which is currently within the Special Select Committee.
The amendment which previously sought to give senior police and customs officers powers to stop, search and seize from persons, currency in the excess of $2M that the officers suspect to be the proceeds of money laundering or financing for terrorism, has been revised from $ 2M to $10M.

APNU Executive Member Joseph Harmon.

The impetus for this decision, according to APNU Executive Member Joseph Harmon, is because the work of the Select Committee was ongoing and the amendment was still being deliberated upon, hence the negotiations with respect to the flexibility of the amendment were not final. It is for this reason he said that work of the Committee should be private, since the government had taken the amendment in its infancy and circulated it “half-baked.”
According to Harmon, the work of the Select Committee is a dynamic process “it is not that you put up one thing and that is the end of it, I had cause to explain earlier that there were recommendations that have been made, even before the Bill came to the Select Committee, that there were at least two years of backward and forward about certain things in relation to some of the fines that are now in the Bill itself”
In providing a comparative reference point to substantiate APNU’s position, Harmon outlined that in the Act, the fines in relation to non-compliance to certain provisions of the Anti-Money Laundering legislation, in particular for the Bankers, now stand at $5M or three years’ imprisonment. “Those fines or initial recommendations from the CFATF [Caribbean Financial Action Task Force] were $100M, but through a process of negotiating back and forth we were able to get them to accept that $5M in the Guyana context would be an appropriate deterrent to this type of thing.”
Harmon further said that APNU’s decision was also influenced by the consensus and feedback from persons engaged with respect to the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism AMLCFT) legislation.
Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU)
According to Harmon APNU made recommendations about strengthening the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) and giving it the authority so that there can be a clear “direction and work” coming from the body.
“I recall when we were dealing with the Amaila Falls project that persons were saying look, we are stopping people from getting cheap electricity and so on, and then came the Kaieteur News photograph with the single drip of the falls…Remember that?”
He said that there is “another single drip”, this time in a letter written by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Shalimar Ali-Hack. “What she has said is that since 2011, the FIU has made just one report, and this is what we have been talking about. She said that even the report they made did not have enough information and so she sent back the letter for some clarification, and this was in December 2011… since then, not another word.”
“Here it is the DPP is saying that this FIU is not working. It is almost as if she is saying this is dysfunctional, and this is the same DPP who came to the select committee and made some very firm recommendations that we must have some changes to the Principal Act and not just the amendments that are recommended by CFATF. Some of those recommendations which the DPP made were taken into consideration.”
As such he argued “why is it that the Principal Act has now become sacrosanct that we cannot make recommendations for changes which give the FIU the kind of teeth and ability to be able to fight money laundering in this country?”
Harmon further contended that money laundering is “not a simple thing as people want to make it out to be”.
“Money laundering is in your face in this country. Unless you give the authorities the power to do what they have to do; give them the training to do what they have to do, we will just pass another piece of legislation and it becomes business as usual. We are not into that, business is no longer as usual in this country. We have to do things the right way and it will be done the right way.”