Guyana to answer tough questions at money laundering review

Last Updated on Wednesday, 17 September 2014, 16:46 by GxMedia

Guyana is dispatching a team to the United States (US) to participate in a hemispheric review of the South American country’s failure to tighten legislation to counter money laundering and terrorism financing.

The targeted review by the Americas Regional Review Group (ARRG) is in keeping with the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) recommendation at its last plenary meeting held in France in June, 2014.

Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr. Roger Luncheon announced that a four-member team would be attending the ARRG meeting to be held during the last week of September.

“They will be meeting in the context of a report that had to be prepared and submitted by Guyana in response to a formal request by the ARRG for information,” he explained.

He explained that the ARRG submitted a document that called for a coinsiderable amount of information about Guyana’s committment to CFATF and FAFT.

He said the ARRG, armed with those results of that targeted review, would submit their findings to the October Plenary of FATF where a judgment would be handed down.

The team members are Attorney General, Anil Nandlall; Head of the Financial Intelligence Unit, Paul Geer; Head of the Special Organised Crime Unit, Assistant Commissioner Sydney James, and Legal Advisor, Leasha James.

The opposition has consistently insisted that it would not pass government-tabled amendments to the 2009 Anti-Money Laundering and Countering of Financing Terrorism (AML/CFT) unless its own amendments are included. The Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF) has maintained that the opposition-proposed amendments ran the risk of making the legislation non-compliant.