Chairman of the National Assembly’s Committee on Appointments Dr George Norton says that the delay in the establishment of the critical Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-ing the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) Authority was caused by organizations taking a lengthy time to submit the names of nominees.
Dr Norton, who is also the Minister of Social Cohesion, informed that the Committee is now in possession of the names of ten nominees, which will be sent to the police for due diligence to be conducted.
“We had some difficulties getting persons to be on that committee,” Norton said, when contacted by Sunday Stabroek recently.
Concerns have been raised over the absence of the Authority, particularly given its importance to the country’s anti-money laundering architecture and the fact that there has been an increase in anti-money laundering investigations in recent months.
Under the AML/CFT Act, the authority will comprise ten persons who have to be given approval by the National Assembly. In turn, the authority will appoint the Director and Deputy Director of the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) along with the lawyer and accountant of the unit.
While the Director and Deputy have already been appointed, Dr Norton told Sunday Stabroek that the accountant and the lawyer have been identified but are still to face final interviews.
With regard to the other members of the Authority, he informed that the Committee wrote to various organizations asking for nominees but this proved difficult. He said that some organizations did respond and in one case the nominee died and the Committee had to request a replacement.
He identified the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Guyana (ICAG) as one of organizations that took some time to identify persons. The ICAG, he said, was asked to supply two names but only submitted one. Norton explained that it was not only the name that was needed but the nominees had to indicate whether they were “politically exposed,” following which a due diligence check would be done by the police.
According to Norton, in addition to ICAG, the Private Sector Commission, the Guyana Association of Bankers (GAB), Transparency Institute of Guyana and the Guyana Bar Association each submitted the names of two nominees. The tenth name was submitted by the Guyana Association of Women Lawyers.
In the case of the ICAG nominee, he said, there was no disclosure as to whether that nominee was politically exposed, while one of the GBA’s nominees was yet to decide whether he was.
Norton said the establishment of the Authority has been “continuously coming up” when the Committee meets, which is regularly.
After a three-year political battle over compliance with international requirements for the anti-money laundering legislation, government was able to pass an amended bill in the Eleventh Parliament on June 26, 2015, which provided for the establishment of the AML/CFT Authority, among other things. It is intended that once established, the Authority will oversee the operations of the FIU, provide advice and will remove ministerial control over the functioning of the FIU.
President David Granger assented to the bill in July of that same year, bringing it into law.
The ten members to comprise the Authority are to be appointed by the National Assembly by simple majority on the recommendation of the Commit-tee on Appointments.
The Authority’s specific responsibilities include ensuring that the work of the FIU is conducted in an efficient, fair and cost effective manner, in accordance with policy guidelines determined by the Assembly and the Minister; ensuring, in the national interest, the performance of the FIU accords with international obligations and commitments; monitoring and reviewing compliance with all relevant legislation, policies and measures; ascertaining the need for any legislation or amendments to existing legislation; causing to be investigated any complaint, irregularity or mismanagement concerning the FIU; and proposing remedial action and assisting in the dissemination of information on the work of the FIU, and enlightening the public of the need for cooperation with the FIU.
Inexcusable
Opposition MP and former Attorney General Anil Nandlall said it was the government that wanted the Authority to be established and therefore “they have no excuse …It is simply a matter of incompetence and neglect.”
Speaking to Sunday Stabroek, he pointed out that the government is completing its second year in office and this “top-heavy, over-bureaucratic AML/CFT Authority is not in place.”
He pointed out that it was the APNU+AFC government on its own volition that decided that “we needed such an Authority. While we were in government, the establishment of this… Authority was part of the amendments they had proposed to the AML/CFT bill which they had hijacked and kept in the select committee for nearly two years.”
Nandlall stated that after the change in government, the period when the PPP/C was not in Parliament was used to pass those amendments into law.” He stressed that to date “they cannot have it appointed and functioning.”
He stated that such an Authority did not come out of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) or Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF) recommendations. “It is a creation of this government while they were in opposition. You would recall that as AG, I had explained at length that you simply can’t legislate at large but you have to legislate to incorporate the recommendation of the FATF and CFATF,” he pointed out. “My explanation obviously fell on deaf ears and now they have created a legislative structure which has a gaping hole that they cannot seem to fill,” he added, while noting that the other aspect of the operational matters that may put Guyana in a state of non-compliance is the role that the Special Organized Crime Unit (SOCU) is playing. Nandlall, who was instrumental in the establishment of SOCU, said that this unit is supposed to be the investigative arm of the FIU and this was to be its only function.
“SOCU has become a political instrument carrying out hatchet jobs for the government. It does no AML/CFT work,” he said.
Not fully cleared
Nandlall charged that although AG Basil Williams SC had previously said that Guyana has been cleared from the FATF blacklist, none of the regime of sanctions which were imposed on Guyana have been removed.
“If you speak to people in the business community, they will confirm it. If you try to secure a bank account for example in the name of a company, it is an almost impossible task. The truth of the matter is that while we were able to pass certain pieces of legislation which you are unable to do in the Tenth Parliament because of the lack of support from the joint opposition, it has not really advanced our call because we were so far behind the rest of the world,” he said.
“…The other countries in the Caribbean are now in their fifth round of mutual evaluation. We just exited the third round,” he noted, while adding that what is also significant is that Williams ought to have been assiduously pursuing the removal of sanctions imposed on Guyana if “as he claims, we are no longer in trouble.”
Nandlall told Sunday Stabroek that it was obvious that there had been no material change in the financial architecture of Guyana because of the imposition of these sanctions. “It is either he mislead the country when he said that we were cleared of wrongdoing or he has neglected to do that which is necessary to ensure that we are no longer being sanctioned because we are not compliant,” he said. “We are still woefully deficient in terms of operational matters,” he added.
