Raphael John-Lall

Big things are hap­pen­ing in the In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre (IFC), ac­cord­ing to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Karen Tesheira.

"A num­ber of firms have (sic) ex­pressed in­ter­est are will­ing to come in and there are a num­ber of them will­ing to sign on the dot­ted lines. "I had one or two meet­ings on that and I al­ways say that we'll give you a fur­ther up­date, but, re­al­ly, things are hap­pen­ing. We do have clients," she said. She said this yes­ter­day af­ter giv­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion at the break­fast meet­ing on the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit (FIU) at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad ho­tel, Port-of-Spain.

Leas­es to be signed

Tesheira said the main is­sue these prospec­tive clients now have is get­ting the lease. "The prob­lem we are hav­ing is the chal­lenge of the lease arrange­ments through Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion. We do have ten­ants ready to take up space in the IFC. They've ap­point­ed 20 floors to us. "The chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer that we have ap­point­ed has iden­ti­fied three or four per­sons who would like to take up space in the IFC build­ing. The ques­tion is that we're now fi­nal­is­ing lease arrange­ments and that is what we were do­ing this week," she said.

Cuban-Amer­i­can is IFC CEO

Tesheira said meet­ings are now tak­ing place on the IFC with the in­volve­ment of the new CEO, Ra­mon Leon. Last Au­gust, Tesheira had said that "very soon," the Gov­ern­ment would be an­nounc­ing the new CEO. "We had a meet­ing Mon­day on it. A CEO was ap­point­ed, Ra­mon Leon, a Cuban Amer­i­can. I think he worked with one of the top fi­nan­cial agen­cies in the Unit­ed States in a very se­nior po­si­tion. He's been with us about two months," she said. Asked whether there is greater in­vest­ment in­ter­est in T&T be­cause of the in­ter­na­tion­al eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery, she said the T&T's econ­o­my was al­ways well man­aged. "T&T has weath­ered the storm well very much.

Our un­em­ploy­ment rate, our in­fla­tion rate, which was our chal­lenge, has come down sig­nif­i­cant­ly. So this is just an­oth­er thrust in the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion in the de­vel­op­ment of the econ­o­my, so I can on­ly see that as the economies of the world turn around, it would on­ly strength­en T&T, our econ­o­my," she said. In 2008, she vis­it­ed Dubai, among oth­er coun­tries, with a team. Phase three in­volved de­vel­op­ing a mar­ket­ing and im­ple­men­ta­tion frame­work. In 2008, an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing leg­is­la­tion, such as the Fi­nan­cial In­sti­tu­tions Act, was passed.

About the FIU

The FIU, in­cor­po­rat­ed un­der the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Act of 2009, and which is part of the Min­istry of Fi­nance, was es­tab­lished to im­ple­ment the an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing poli­cies of the Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force, an in­ter-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion set up by the Group of Sev­en in­dus­tri­alised coun­tries. The FIU is lo­cat­ed at Lev­el 25, Tow­er D, IFC, 1a Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain.