The government is to sign a Letter of Agreement for a security pact with the US aimed at building local capacity to combat the narco-trade and root out dirty money in the economy, Cabinet Secretary Dr. Roger Luncheon yesterday revealed.
Speaking to reporters at his post-Cabinet news briefing yesterday, Dr. Luncheon stated that Guyana will be signing on to the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI), which arose out of the 2009 Summit of the Americas, held in Trinidad. “The two parties have agreed on the design and the execution of the CBSI, which would be addressing citizen security, primarily through the reduction of illicit trafficking, promoting public safety/security and social justice,” he said. The design sees two components—financing deliverables under counter– narcotic operations and the second, anti-money laundering and financial crimes, he added.
He stated that under the counter narcotics segment of the agreement, attention would be on the Guyana Police Force’s Narcotics branch and the Customs Anti-Narcotic Unit (CANU) and will deal with counter-narcotic training and counter-narcotic professionalism for those entities. “The support will be provided to build capacity in the Financial Investigative Unit and hopefully also in GRA to allow them to track illegal inflows and the use of dirty money in the economy. The actual value under this letter of credit is just about US$100, 000,” he added.
However, he noted that there are millions of dollars that Guyana can tap into under the wider CBSI over three years but those funds will have to be programmed as was done with the agreement about to be signed.
