The Alliance For Change will not support government’s proposed amendments to the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism Amendment Bill (AML/CFT) until the establishment of the Public Procurement Commission and the President’s review of two vetoed bills.
“The Alliance For Change is going to make it quite clear that we will only give our support if there is reconsideration of the assent to those two bills and the establishment and the operationalisation, within some deadline, of the procurement commission,” Leader of the AFC Khemraj Ramjattan yesterday told a news conference.
The declaration by the AFC is a sign that the opposition is hardening its position on the government as it has seen no compromises in areas such as the PPC and the assenting to bills passed by the opposition’s one-seat majority. The main opposition coalition APNU says that it will analyse its response to President Donald Ramotar’s decision not to assent to the two bills.
“The Alliance For Change is going to reconsider its support of the Anti-Money Laundering Bill in view of the fact that the government has not assented to the two opposition bills, namely the Fiscal, Manage-ment and Accountability Amend-ment and the President Other Bene-fits Amendment. We are also going to demand that our support for the Anti Money Laundering Bill is going to be [contingent] on the fact that a procurement commission must be established,” Ramjattan went on to state.
Even with government’s lament that international sanctions loom should the bill not be made law by a May 27 deadline, the opposition last week chose to send it to a Special Select Committee.
Both opposition parties had stated that government, while having prolonged periods to make the amendments, chose to bring it to the house shortly before its deadline. This, they said, did not allow for proper scrutiny and analysis and as such they felt the move to send it to the Special Select Committee was just.
The AFC had said that neither international sanctions nor the threat of sanctions should be reason for haste and defended its stance to send it to the committee.
The amendments to the AML/CFT, once passed, will see an increase in the minimum fine upon conviction for certain money laundering offences from $1 million to $5 million; the insertion of a new section to provide for the freezing of funds of terrorists and terrorist groups or organisations and widening the scope of the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) to request in-formation from telecoms providers.
The amendments also seek to expand due diligence obligations of reporting entities. One of the amendments would provide for reporting entities not to open new accounts or conduct business when they are unable to obtain satisfactory evidence of the identity of the intended customer and to consider making a suspicious transaction report. And, where a customer becomes “politically exposed”—either directly as a functionary of the government, state, judiciary, military, important political party, or indirectly as a family member or close associate of such a functionary—the senior management of a reporting entity would have to greenlight continued business relations.
Yesterday, Ramjattan also stressed that the president needed to review his decision on the vetoing of the two opposition bills. He said that while, personally, he was vexed with President Ramotar’s decision his party viewed his actions as “wholly unmeritorious, lacking any cogency and totally ridiculous”.
The President wrote to Speaker of the National Assembly Raphael Trotman last week, formally notifying him that he has withheld his assent to the Fiscal Management and Accountability (Amendment) Bill 2012 and the Former Presidents (Benefits and Other Facilities) Bill 2012 passed via the opposition’s one-seat majority.
“We feel that this government is taking its eyes pass the National Assembly and the majority of the legally elected representatives therein, when it would say very outrageously … that the National Assembly is holding at ransom the President. We honestly believe, at this stage, that it is the President who is holding at ransom the National Assembly,” Ramjattan said.
