Our Anti-Money Laundering/Countering the Financing of Terrorism legislation has had a chequered history not only for its substantive content, but for the politics of its passage. Five years ago, our financial sector was thrown into a panic when the regional CATF announced we were in imminent danger of being blacklisted by the G-20 sponsored parent body, the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF).
The threat of a “blacklist” immediately precipitated tighter scrutiny by the international banking community, and several members of the latter severed their correspondent relationship with this country. With an unmitigated disaster staring the business community in the face, the PPP Administration rushed to pass the legislation recommended by the CATF to ensure compliance with its rules.
But with the APNU/AFC Opposition controlling the National Assembly, the Government’s Bill was defeated, with the former insisting that there were additional requirements needed to strengthen the Act. Notable among these, the Opposition contended, was the need for the eponymous Financial Investigating Unit (FIU) to be made more independent, and not to be responsible to the Finance Minister but to a bipartisan parliamentary-appointed AML/CFT Authority.
That Authority would consist of ten members nominated by several private sector bodies and appointed by the National Assembly by simple majority on the recommendation of the Parliamentary Committee on Appointments. The critical role of the Authority would be to ensure widespread legitimacy of the FIU’s work, and to prevent possible “witch-hunting” through its provision of general policies and suggestion for new required enforcement legislation.
The PPP disagreed vehemently with the need for the Authority, and called it an unnecessary bureaucratic imposition. Very soon after, they prorogued Parliament, and national elections resulted in the APNU/AFC Opposition coalition forming the new Government. One of the new Government’s first acts in 2015 was to enact the AML/CFT legislation, which included the oversight Authority into which they had dug their heels.
However, two years later, even though individuals had been nominated to constitute the AML/CFT Authority by the Private Sector Commission (PSC), Guyana Association of Bankers (GAB), Institute of Chartered Accountants of Guyana (ICAG), Transparency Institute of Guyana Inc. (TIGI), Guyana Bar Association, Insurance Institute of Guyana (IIG), the Guyana Association of Women Lawyers (GAWL) and the Guyana Securities Council (GSC), the latter has never been launched, even though the PPP, now in Opposition, questioned this inertia in the face of the Government’s previous resolute contention.
However, last week, at the CFATF Plenary and Working Group meeting, Attorney General Basil Williams dropped a bombshell when he revealed to the media that the Government now believes there is no need for the AML/CTF Authority it had demanded, and almost caused the country’s financial system to collapse when its demand was not acceded to.
Speaking of the Act he had spearheaded in the National Assembly, AG Williams reportedly confessed: “That was overkill. Why would you put such a heavy superstructure over FIU (Financial Intelligence Unit)? We’ll have to probably repeal it, because it’s otiose; it’s a waste of time.” The word “otiose”, of course, means “useless” and ineffectual”.
In and of itself, there is nothing wrong with an individual, a Government, or a political party changing its stance on any issue; but in this instance, when the now APNU/AFC Administration had held the entire business community — and by default the then Government and country — at ransom with its adamantine stance, the nonchalance now displayed by the Government on its volte face is symptomatic of the authoritarian mode of governance that once prevailed under the PNC between 1964 and 1992. At a minimum, a Government even genuflecting to democratic decision-making would have explained to the stakeholders affected in the first instance, and in the subsequent nomination process. More expansively, that Government would have apologised.
But could it be that the proposed names for the AML/CFT Authority — attorney Sadie Amin, UG lecturer Thomas Bissessar Singh, chartered accountant and attorney Christopher Ram, businessman Gerry Gouveia; Nicholas Deygoo, Wayne Eucaulton Fordyce, Hance Manohar, Frederick Collins, Mohamed Alli, and Melissa Jessica DeSantos — are not “fit and proper”?
