Guyana will miss yet another deadline by which it was expected to pass the Anti-Money Laundering Countering the Financing of Terrorism (Amendment) Bill after the Select Committee looking at the bill failed to wrap up its work during a meeting last evening.
Additionally, Legal Affairs Minister Anil Nandlall said that officials from the Caribbean Action Task Force (CFATF), after requesting and perusing the amendments to the bill put forward by A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) has via letter, rejected those proposals.
The committee’s next meeting is on Thursday; one day after the last sitting of the National Assembly and three days before CFATF begins its plenary on May 26. But even if the political parties were able to figure out a way to get the bill back to the house before the meeting begins, or even before it is Guyana’s turn to be evaluated during the four-day plenary (it ends on May 29), the Alliance for Change (AFC) and APNU still have conditions to be met before they give their support to its passing.
The AFC requires government to set up the Public Procurement Commission (PPC) while APNU’s request is for President Donald Ramotar to sign several bills he has refused to assent to.
In a press release last night, Nandlall knocked APNU, whose representatives, he said,