Trinidad: ‘Barber’ goes to bank with over $1 million cash

(Trinidad Guardian) In the last three days, sev­er­al sus­pi­cious trans­ac­tions by du­bi­ous pro­fes­sion­als have been un­earthed in the bank­ing sec­tor as thou­sands of cus­tomers con­tin­ue to rush fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions to ex­change their ex­ist­ing $100 bill for the new $100 poly­mer notes.

 
One sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty in­volved a bar­ber who walked in­to a bank with $1mil­lion in pa­per-based $100 bills to be swapped for the new $100 notes which the pub­lic be­gan ac­cess­ing at banks on Tues­day.

The old $100 notes will be­come in­valid on De­cem­ber 31.

The changeover from pa­per to poly­mer is the ba­sis of Gov­ern­ment’s lat­est an­ti-crime plan to flush out crim­i­nal el­e­ments, cut off fund­ing of gangs and take the prof­it out of crime.

The rev­e­la­tion came from Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert at yes­ter­day’s post Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s.

Im­bert was first to talk about the sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ties, stat­ing that he re­ceived re­ports yes­ter­day that some cus­tomers had been vis­it­ing banks with “large quan­ti­ties of cash.”

Im­bert said some of these in­di­vid­u­als are find­ing it dif­fi­cult to fill out a source of funds de­c­la­ra­tion form “to in­di­cate where they got the mon­ey from.”

If some­one walked in­to a bank with a $1 mil­lion in cash and claimed it was their sav­ings over the years, Im­bert said: “It can prove to be a chal­lenge.”

In cas­es like that, Im­bert said that cus­tomer would be ad­vised to go to the Cen­tral Bank to have the mon­ey ex­changed or to get some con­sid­er­a­tion for the notes.

“We are deal­ing with the is­sues as they arise. As is­sues come up we are ad­dress­ing it,” Im­bert said.

He said com­mer­cial banks and Cen­tral Bank have been work­ing with the Gov­ern­ment.

Young ad­mit­ted that in the last three days banks have picked up in the sys­tem some un­usu­al trans­ac­tions.

“Some of the ex­am­ples would shock any law-abid­ing cit­i­zen of per­sons turn­ing up with sig­nif­i­cant amounts of cash and when be­ing asked about the source of funds some of the ex­pla­na­tions are very dif­fi­cult from a point of view. We have had quite a few in­stances of per­sons turn­ing up and claim­ing to be of pro­fes­sions…you would be very sur­prised to be car­ry­ing around $1 mil­lion in cash and there­about. Some with more than $1 mil­lion in cash.”

Pressed by re­porters to give ex­am­ples of peo­ple claim­ing to have “pro­fes­sions” and had showed up at banks with large sums of cash in ex­change for the $100 poly­mer note, Young said he could not di­vulge much as the state’s se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices and heads of se­cu­ri­ty at his min­istry have been work­ing on in­tel­li­gence and gath­er­ing cer­tain in­for­ma­tion.

“We had some ridicu­lous ex­am­ples of per­sons go­ing to le­git­i­mate busi­ness­es plac­ing or­ders in cash and then can­celling the or­ders when it is time to col­lect and say, well, give me a cheque in­stead. Per­sons are turn­ing up at the banks try­ing to cash hun­dreds of thou­sands…. mil­lions of dol­lars in some in­stances….telling us it is a very du­bi­ous pro­fes­sion as to where the mon­ey came from,” he said.

Young cit­ed an in­di­vid­ual who iden­ti­fied him­self as “a bar­ber with over $1 mil­lion in cash. That is a very ex­pen­sive set of hair­cuts. Again, I am not cast­ing any as­per­sions.”

He said they al­so re­ceived re­ports that some in­di­vid­u­als had pur­chased large quan­ti­ties of gold and for­eign-used cars with the old $100 bill to get it off their hands be­fore the mon­ey be­comes in­valid by year’s end.

In the study of what they ex­pect­ed, Young said it is with­in the am­bit of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and Cus­toms and Ex­cise when faced with in­di­vid­u­als with large sums of mon­ey “who can­not pro­vide a prop­er ex­pla­na­tion as to how they ac­quired the mon­ey” or “have sus­pi­cion on the pro­ceed of crime” that they car­ry out an in­ter­ro­ga­tion process, and if not sat­is­fied with their an­swer, a seizure takes place and then it goes to court.

“That is be­ing em­ployed across the coun­try.”

Young could not say how many trans­ac­tions were flagged since banks be­gan ex­chang­ing the old for the new notes.

He al­so re­vealed there were in­stances of banks pick­ing up coun­ter­feit $100 bills.

Young re­mind­ed the pop­u­la­tion that mon­ey laun­der­ing was a crim­i­nal of­fence and any­one who fa­cil­i­tat­ed mon­ey laun­der­ing can al­so be charged.

The Gov­ern­ment, he said, did not cre­ate any new law to the amend­ment the Cen­tral Bank Act to have the de­mon­eti­sa­tion process done, point­ing out that the Ex­plain Your Wealth Bill was passed months ago to take the prof­it out of crime which they have been clamp­ing down on.