Latest update January 5th, 2025 2:16 AM
Anti-money laundering legislation …Opposition’s amendments will have rippling effects – Teixeira
Presidential advisor on governance and Chief Whip Gail Teixeira has articulated that the amendments that APNU want to apply to the Anti Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) Amendment Bill which is currently within the Special Select Committee will lead to changes in legislation outside of the remit of the Committee.
Chairperson of the Select Committee, Gail Teixeira
A Partnership of National Unity (APNU) has said that it is looking at the amendments that are being proposed within the Select Committee. The opposition coalition also highlighted that the Chief Parliamentary Counsel is taking too long to put into legislative language “some simple amendments” that were presented by APNU and stressed that there must be some “hidden hand” behind, dragging the process along.
Teixeira, who is also the chairperson of the Parliamentary Special Select Committee, expressed however, that APNU’s amendments were not simple and alluded that they would have rippling effects within other areas that were previously never looked at.
According to Teixeira, the Parliamentary Select Committee has been advised by the Chief Parliamentary Counsel Cecil Dhurjon, with his presence and in writing on two occasions, of the problem and the dilemma he faces drafting APNU’s amendments.
She said, in particular “…the amendment to the governance structure that APNU is proposing, where they are saying that Parliament will appoint this body not the President. So they have written it in such a way that Parliament selects ten people and they are appointed by the Parliament, that legislatively is a nightmare, there is no such precedent in our law and we can’t find in other laws.”
Secondly, she said, is that the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) “will be appointed by a Parliamentary Committee and its director and staff. The problem with that may not be a big legislative problem but a problem with CFATF.”
According to Teixeira, Dhurjon has put in writing “the challenges he faces and that it is not just changing one section of the Principal Act, there are consequential changes…One of his challenges is that the amendments that APNU now want will require other amendments in other Acts that we haven’t even contemplated, so the remit of the committee has gone haywire, it has gone into areas that we would now have to be amending Bills or Acts that were never brought before the House.”
She said it means you have to have consequential changes to other Bills, other Acts such as the Bank of Guyana Act which is not before the Committee. “Do we have the authority as a committee to start changing laws all over the place that’s not our remit but it’s because of the amendments brought by APNU. It’s like an onion, peeling off the layers and you get more and more and more, that’s what we are discovering in the drafting, so it is unfair of them to say what they are saying, they have a right to their opinion but they are wrong” Teixeira opined.
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