Introduction
In my current series of Sunday columns on countering money laundering and the risks of terrorist financing and proliferation I have consistently advanced what I consider to be the fundamental view that the financial crime of tax evasion is the primary driver of money laundering. This is true not only for the international level, but more specifically for Guyana and the wider Caribbean. In the wider Caribbean, where there is a proliferation of typical tax havens, this driver is indeed most classically revealed. However, in Guyana the driver functions more or less as an extension of a broader range of organized criminal endeavours. Therefore, by no stretch of the imagination can it be successfully argued that Guyana fits the profile of a typical tax haven.
Additionally it should be noted, this series has consistently stressed that its readers should never underestimate the threats which tax evasion and money laundering together pose to the modern capitalist state. As previously indicated, these threats arise from at least two major, but related directions. The first of these is the relentless strain which tax evasion places on the fiscal capacity (tax raising) of the capitalist state. And the other is the consequential exposure this leads to, of capitalist market economies continuously co-mingling criminal motives with its price incentives and other transactional mechanisms.
FACTA
There is little doubt that, in recent times, concern about money laundering has been resurgent globally. Thus, as recently as June of this year (2013), the G20 group of