Established companies and money laundering in Guyana

Aug 04, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

On Sunday, on our way to Leonard Craig’s wedding in Region Five (as with the weddings of Edison Jefford and Abena Rockcliffe, both of Kaieteur News, disaster happened with this wedding too that prevented my wife from going but details later) the conversation in the car was Omar Shariff and the billions of dollars this young public servant was discovered to have.
Trevor Williams, former AFC Parliamentarian, told us the experience he had with one of the banks a few weeks ago. Based on the anti-money-laundering Act, Trevor said they carried him through the mill to collect his salary. He said that even though he is paid through the bank, they wanted to see a previous pay slip plus a few pieces of identification.
It was my turn to relate a similar experience I had which AFC Parliamentarian Michael Carrington couldn’t believe. He was sitting in the front seat and after I told my story, he asked; “Yuh serious?”
Each year, Mr. Glenn Lall, the owner of Kaieteur News shares out a bonus to all employees during the Christmas season. As the columnist I am included. Weeks into the New Year, I went to the bank to put a small part of the bonus into my account. For that sum I had to fill out two forms about where I got the money from.
I told them it was Kaieteur News. A few other questions followed which got me angry because I insisted they write Kaieteur News to ascertain if I was telling the truth and if not, they can call in the police. The lady was polite and said that it was regulations; the banks were instructed to adopt by the Bank of Guyana. I am not going to name the banks because all of them follow the same procedures as in my case and with Trevor Williams’.
The most sickening question each reader should ask on reading what happened with me and Trevor is how the major commercial banks allowed Omar Shariff to deposit these gargantuan sums running into billions of dollars? He purchased sizeable in shares in Banks DIH. Based on the anti-money laundering Act, the company was bound to make enquiries about Shariff. This is simple common sense.
If you want to launder money, you buy stocks and bonds, deposit large sums into financial houses and purchase large scale properties. Since the people who are involved in drafting anti-laundering legislation know this, then the law must include requirements of companies to ask questions and investigate like the question put to me and Trevor Williams.
How did Omar escape? Omar is an omadhaun to think those colossal assets would not have been detected one day, once the PPP went out of office but this omadhaun survived because they may have been complicity by huge, established financial houses.
The Omar Shariff case throws wide open the survival of this country. If the Government of Guyana allows these prominent financial houses to be un- investigated, this country would not be worth saving. People like Trevor Williams are in the leadership of the AFC that forms a big part of the Government. Michael Carrington is a Member of Parliament and in the leadership of the AFC too. They were in the car when all the voices in that vehicle pointed to the need to probe these companies that allegedly accommodated Shariff’s investments. Williams and Carrington must voice their concern of their urgency to their colleagues in the AFC hierarchy that these financial houses need to be examined by SARU and SOCU.
What about that party that is also a part of the Government- the WPA? I was outside the AFC head office and David Hinds’s public condemnation in the press of the AFC became a torrid topic of conversation. Referring to David as my friend, two upcoming leaders of the AFC asked me how David can summon the gall to scandalize the AFC and remain silent on the invisible role of his own party, the WPA in the exercise of state power.
The story of Omar Shariff is going to be followed with increasing curiosity by this entire nation. If we can charge a former Minister with violation of the law then what about commercial banks and other financial houses that may (I say may) be complicit in facilitating the cleaning of corrupt money.
The small bandits are watching how the law is going to unfold on this one. If the law doesn’t act, then as Lou Rawls sang in his famous cover of the Rod Stewart song, ‘Trade Winds’, “God, help tomorrow’s youth.”

1 thoughts on “Established companies and money laundering in Guyana”

carl veecock August 4, 2016 at 12:58 am

Are the banks not acting in accordance with the new regulations on money-laundering?

I do not know if the size of the deposit is stated in the regulations, but surely a salary cheque should not cause suspicion.
Could be compliance with a secret list of names given to the banks.