Latest update April 9th, 2025 12:59 AM
Commercial Banks, GRA, DPP must expand investigative capacity
– For Special Organized Crime Unit to work, says Greenidge
For the recently established Special Organized Crime Unit (SOCU) to be a success, certain key agencies will have to improve their financial investigative capacity.
Carl Greenidge, APNU’s Shadow Finance Minister
This is the view of A Partnership for National Unity’s (APNU) Shadow Minister of Finance, Carl Greenidge.
The politician said that the work assigned to this unit is not normal police work. He explained that the fight against money laundering is simple in concept and it involves people who make money in a variety of ways including the drug trade.
Money launderers, he said, try to get “ill-gotten-money” into the banking system as normal deposits so that they may spend when and where they like, without hindrance by the relevant authorities.
Stopping them, Greenidge said, involves policing which includes drug interdiction and detective work first of all.
The APNU Parliamentarian said that the government in some cases deliberately allowed the Guyana Police Force and especially its detective services to deteriorate.
As far as army intelligence is concerned, Greenidge asserted that the disbandment of the unit and its conversion into primarily a political unit accused of torture, does nothing to make the skills relevant to the task ahead.
The work of the SOCU, he said, will at some point, require detective skills. Greenidge said that the fight against money launderers will require, particularly, forensic accounting, auditing and legal analysis. He opined that very little of the latter aspect is to be found among the professionals in the disciplined services.
“This whole process is like a chain and each link depends on each other. The FIU depends on its reporting institutions to report all activities that are suspicious. The FIU, after receiving that report, will now send it off to the SOCU which will operate as the investigative arm.
Now my point is simply, that the strength of the information SOCU receives, depends on the capacity of the reporting agencies to even detect, investigate and analyze certain activities so that they send to the FIU a comprehensive report. To support this point, just consider the FIU where the one report that was actually forwarded to the DPP was incomplete. A chain is as strong as its weakest link and we need to address every weak area so that SOCU does not become another toothless poodle,” Greenidge asserted.
The APNU Parliamentarian said, “The unit has specific and unconventional tasks to perform, tasks which require skills in which we are short. The belief that they can be short circuited by appointing a soldier per se to do them is ill-conceived. Worse yet, is the sloth in providing for supporting staff and office facilities.”
The head of the SOCU will require the types of capacities I have outlined above and the Guyana Revenue Authority as well as the Banks and the DPP, will need to deepen their capacities on the financial and investigative front in terms of financial and accounting analysis,” the former finance minister said.
While he raised that concern, he added that he is worried that Guyana has a police force which does not know that the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act. This Act, he explained, specifies criminal financial acts.
“If this cannot be understood, then how can the Guyana Police Force and the officers appointed to SOCU expect the Opposition and even citizens to believe that they can possibly handle the pursuit of money laundering transactions of growing complexity?”
“I urge the AG and the Minister of Finance who should know better; to look at the composition and skill mix of the staff of equivalent units in Canada, the United Kingdom and the USA,” Greenidge urged.
The mandate of both the FIU and SOCU is to investigate suspicious transactions based on reports it would receive from the relevant reporting entities. The SOCU was conceptualized by Cabinet last year and $63.1 M was later approved for the construction of its headquarters. At this moment, the newly formed entity has no office to even start preliminary administrative work.
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