FATF finds Guyana’s AML/CFT regime still deficient

Oct 27, 2015 News

Guyana has submitted its report to the Financial Action Task Force and amended its relevant legislation among a host of other measures, but the country remains deficient in relation to its international commitments.
This past week Guyana made its most recent submission to FATF by a team headed by Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Basil Williams.
FATF noted that since June 2015, Guyana has taken steps toward improving its Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism Act, “however, the FATF has determined that certain strategic deficiencies remain.”
It has since recommended that Guyana should continue to implement its action plan, by ensuring and implementing an adequate legal framework for identifying, tracing and freezing terrorist assets.
FATF also wants Guyana to ensure a fully operational and effectively functioning financial intelligence unit; establish effective measures for customer due diligence and enhancing financial transparency and implement an adequate supervisory framework.
Guyana’s deficiencies in meeting FATF compliance has seen it being placed in a category of countries with strategic shortcomings including, Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Syria and Uganda among others.
In pronouncing on this group of countries, FATF did observe that as part of its ongoing review of compliance with the AML/CFT standards, FATF has to date identified several jurisdictions that have strategic AML/CFT deficiencies for which they have developed an action plan with the FATF. Guyana is one.
The international body did note, too, that while the situations differ among each jurisdiction, each jurisdiction has provided a written high-level political commitment to address the identified deficiencies.
In June when the newly installed coalition A Partnership for National Unity plus Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) got down to business, one of the first moves was to seek to pass the amendments to the AML/CFT legislation.
During the course of that debate, the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) opposition had argued that the legislative amendments would not be compliant with the Regional and international bodies.
The Party also had heavy criticism for US Chargé d’ Affaires, Bryan Hunt, who had expressed his support for the revised bill.
The PPP stated that the envoy “was not fully informed or was speaking about the wrong Bill”, by stating that the Bill was fully compliant with CFATF/ FATF regulations.
The government subsequently went ahead with the tabling of the AML/CFT amendments and subsequent passage.

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