It has taken Parliament’s Appointment Committee 15 months to identify an accountant for the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) – a key node in the fight against money laundering.
According to the Fourth Report of the Committee on Appointments, dated April 13, 2017, and circulated in the National Assembly on Thursday, the search for an accountant commenced on December 23, 2015 and ended on March 22, 2017. The committee has now submitted to the National Assembly, the name of Surendra Lall Boodhoo for the position of accountant in the FIU.
In his report, Chairman of the Committee on Appointments, Dr George Norton detailed the process followed over the 15 months.
The search for an accountant was necessitated by the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) (Amendment) Act of 2015 which mandated that the FIU should include an accountant appointed by the Parliamentary Committee on Appointments from a list derived from responses to a public announcement of the vacancy.