The Schedule below summarizes the key features of the strategic guideposts for a way forward presented in the two previous columns. These have been designed to address the current impasse facing Guyana and the Caribbean Financial Task Force (CFATF). Together they seek to contend with the legislative part of Guyana’s outstanding obligations the CFATF (and by extension the global Financial Action Task Force – FATF). These guideposts provide dynamic guidelines for not only resolving the immediate stalemate but hopefully also providing the basis for a strategy designed to reform anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism and proliferation into the medium-term and long-term.
As the Schedule indicates, these guideposts are rooted in the acknowledgement of 1) The considerable scope and scale of the money laundering threat in Guyana 2) The profoundly multi-dimensional nature of that threat, covering as it does political, economic, social, cultural and behavioural spheres of life 3) The tension, which exists between the government and the opposition following the former’s call for immediate action due to the perceived threat of external sanctions by the CFATF and FATF 4)The core weaknesses of the current money laundering legislation (Act 13 of 2009).
Following on these guideposts, I next provide some specific markers that I believe the Members of the Special Select Committee on Money Laundering should apply to