Govt disappointed with US report on money laundering fight

Apr 23, 2025 News

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Kaieteur News- The Government of Guyana has expressed disappointment with the assessment of the United States of this country’s fight against money laundering.

In its 2025 International Narcotics Strategy report, the US Department of State, among other things, criticized Guyana’s fight against money laundering, saying that its premier enforcement agencies are weak and that low salaries have contributed to some ranks being compromised.

Below is the full statement by the Guyana Government issued by Attorney General, Anil Nadlall

RESPONSE TO 2025 INTERNATIONAL NARCOTICS CONTROL STRATEGY REPORT (INCSR)

22nd April 2025

I must express some level of surprise and disappointment in respect of much of the materials published in that INCS Report regarding Guyana’s AML/CFT framework and capabilities. I recall a questionnaire was circulated from the publishers of this report, and large volumes of critical information were supplied, but were unfortunately omitted in the report.

There is no need for one to speculate in relation to Guyana’s AML/CFT credentials. These were recently scrupulously examined over a period of 18 months, from September 2022 to June 2024, in a mutual evaluation exercise conducted by the most premier regulatory body in this hemisphere – the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF). In this process, every aspect of Guyana’s AML/CFT framework was critically scrutinized, including our legislative framework, our administrative processes, our investigative capabilities, and our law enforcement and prosecutorial capacities.

Additionally, various critical sectors were interrogated, including the mining, banking and real estate sectors, revenue collection, gaming authorities, and the Commercial and Deeds Registries. For example, Guyana has bolstered its Beneficial Ownership Legislative provisions by requiring covered entities to identify and verify beneficial ownership information for legal persons and legal arrangements. The Commercial Registry has exercised various powers -primarily, the right of refusal and the power of issuing warnings, and ultimately striking companies from the register for failure to provide basic and beneficial ownership information, which has resulted in significant improvement of compliance by companies, with over 2000 companies filing BO information from 2023 to present.

Even Guyana’s inter-agency as well as inter-country cooperation mechanisms were examined. Issues such as beneficial ownership were specifically evaluated. In the end, Guyana was given a clean bill of health. In fact, Guyana fared better than most of its Caribbean counterparts.

Significantly, this positive appraisal comes from the appropriate and authorised global regulator for this hemisphere, and therefore, in my respectful view, constitutes the authoritative and conclusive diagnosis of Guyana’s AML/CFT credentials. The INCS Report should have taken guidance from CFATF’s mutual assessment of Guyana, which is publicly available on CFATF’s website. CFATF’s assessment of Guyana received the approbation of the Financial Action Task Force – the global regulator of this sector.

Coincidentally, just last month, an Article IV Mission from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) examined, inter alia, Guyana’s AML/CFT’s framework and performance. The findings of that body are strikingly different from the INSCR Report. One section reads:

“Staff supports Guyana’s continued efforts to strengthen its AML/CFT and anti-corruption frameworks in line with its international commitments. Guyana’s Mutual Evaluation Report by the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF), published in 2024, found a significant improvement in Guyana’s efforts to improve its understanding of ML/FT risks via the conduct of multiple ML/FT risk assessments, including a 2023 sectoral risk assessment on the Extractive Industries. The 2024 Sixth Round of Review of the Mechanism for Follow-up on the Implementation of the Inter-American Convention against Corruption (MESICIC) from the Organization of American States also acknowledges Guyana’s progress, and the authorities are working to strengthen the Integrity Commission, particularly the compliance framework for the submission of declarations.

In line with the recommendations of the MESICIC 2024 report, work is ongoing in multiple areas to strengthen anti-corruption efforts. Following the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) report published in 2024, the authorities are working to implement the beneficial ownership transparency recommendation in line with the EITI standards. There is also scope to strengthen regulatory compliance in the non-oil mining sector.

 

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