Belize the standout CARICOM member country in fight against financial crimes

In a region that continues to come under increasing international scrutiny arising out of occurrences that point to a proclivity for the pursuit of money-laundering and other financial crimes,  Caribbean Community member country, Belize, continues to accumulate plaudits for what is believed to be the state’s scrupulous efforts to combat money laundering and terrorism. Earlier this month, the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF) made public what is considered to be the laudable efforts being made by the CARICOM member state to position itself as a global leader in the pursuit of the eradication of financial crimes.

The CFATF’s commendation, which was documented in Belize’s Fourth Round Mutual Evaluation Report, comes at a time when, increasingly, fingers are being pointed at some countries in the region deemed to be ‘in deep’ where AML/CTF-related crimes are concerned. The recent CFATF reportedly went to considerable lengths to highlight what it considers to be Belize’s impressive strides in pursuit of combatting of money laundering, terrorism financing, and the spread of weapons of mass destruction, infractions which fall under the purview of the CFATF.

Reportedly, the CFATF cited Belize’s efforts in the areas of technical compliance and effectiveness, noting that out of the forty CFATF recommendations for technical compliance, Belize was fully compliant in thirty-eight. Beyond that, the Report also noted that the country also achieved substantial effectiveness in five of the eleven immediate outcomes, moderate in five, and low in just one. Here it should be noted that the laudable citation afforded Belize by the CFATF comes at a time when (some) other CARICOM member countries are perceived as having dubious bona fides in those areas. Crimes that include drug-trafficking, money-laundering and related violence are widely believed to be particularly prevalent in some CARICOM countries.

The report quotes the Director of Belize’s Financial Intelligence Unit, Leni Ysaguirre-McGann, as saying that since Belize is a part of the international financial system it seeks to operate with the confines of that system. That mode of behaviour, he added, “is important for our economic viability and our business viability.” The Belizean official reportedly said that the effectiveness of the CFATF reposes in the “peer pressure” mechanism which it employs, adding that the system is quite effective in having countries abide and comply with the standards since failure to comply entangles them in a review process which could leave delinquent countries ‘grey-listed’ or, worse, black-listed.

The Belizian official is quoted as saying that Belize’s goal is “to avoid the blacklist and grey list and avoiding it, means we don’t end up in an enhanced review process following our assessments. What would have happened had we not avoided those listings is that we would have ended up in a review process following our evaluation where they would then zone into the areas of deficiencies and put us on an action plan with specific timelines that we would have had to abide by,” he added.

 Back in June, last year, Guyana’s “4th Round Mutual Evaluation Report” was adopted at the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF) 58th Plenary and Working Group Meetings in Trinidad and Tobago. Reports deriving from that meeting indicated that Guyana had successfully defended what one media report described as “the favourable ratings that the country’s Anti-Money Laundering/Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) architecture received after a Mutual Evaluation Exercise was completed.” That exercise reportedly comprised a comprehensive examination of the country’s AML/CFT regime.