AFC position will not be delinked just to get ours passed – says APNU on AML Bill

Jul 13, 2014 News

“We are parties in opposition and we are not going take out the Alliance For Change position because we have ours.”
This is according to A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) Member of Parliament and Shadow Home Affairs

Shadow Home Affairs Minister, Winston Felix

Minister, Winston Felix. He was at the time responding to Head of the Presidential Secretariat (HPS) Dr. Roger Luncheon’s arguments that the government acceded to APNU demands to get the Anti Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) Bill passed but APNU withheld support.
The AFC has called for the establishment of the constitutionally mandated Public Procurement Commission (PPC) without Cabinet’s no objection to contracts above $15M before support can be given for the passage of the AML/CFT legislation.
While A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) had called for the re-tabling of the Local Government Bills within the National Assembly in addition to the amendments they have with AML legislation itself.
According to Felix, APNU had in the previous Parliament called for the establishment of the PPC “now the AFC has picked it up, for good governance we see that it is a necessary piece of legislation.”
Dr Luncheon has advised that the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has given Guyana up to October (four months) to get its Money Laundering act together legislatively as well as non legislatively and face a targeted review by the body.
Felix said that the four-month time frame granted by FATF is not an issue for APNU. “We want this Bill to be tidied up so that it has teeth in Guyana. As it currently stands even if you include all that FATF and Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF) wants; the Bill is ineffective in Guyana.”
The rationale for this, he said, is because “you don’t have a proper Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), you don’t have investigators; the whole thing is in disarray. You have not charged one person for money laundering from 2000 to now.”
Felix said that Guyana needs an effective AML Bill, effective in that there should be a situation when money launderers are caught they will be dealt with by the law. “AML by its very nature is intricate. You need to have forensic investigators who would deal with these issues and put a case together that would make sense in Court… The teeth have to be with the Law. That’s what we are fighting for and then the Special Organized Crime Unit (SOCU) will execute. As the law now stands it doesn’t have that.”
Leader of APNU, Brig David Granger, said that his party had meetings with the government side and “they are quite aware of the position of the APNU. In addition to our conditions we also indicated support for the AFC demand for the Public Procurement Commission, so that is where the talks were halted.

Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr. Roger Luncheon

He said further that the demands that the APNU and AFC are making are all within the constitution. “They are not extra constitutional or in any way in violation of the law.”
Dr Luncheon had also established that even though there was a four-month extension the government and the opposition up to the most recent deadline could not compromise on the way forward and that is still what obtains since there is nothing on the table.
He went further to suggest that “prayer” is what is needed.
Addressing the four-month extension granted to by FATF to Guyana, Granger said that “these are matters I said that can be dealt with in one day.” He said that when the discussions ended between government and the opposition nothing changed so “that’s was the position we were at but we are prepared to resume talks.”

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