Chair­man of the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) Christo­pher Thomas has ad­mit­ted there was a de­lay in the ap­point­ment of the di­rec­tor of the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit (FIU) of the Min­istry of Fi­nance. For­mer Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al Su­san Fran­cois' ap­point­ment was con­firmed by the com­mis­sion last week. It was done more than a year af­ter the Gov­ern­ment ap­point­ed her to the post. The com­mis­sion said Fran­cois' ap­point­ment was retroac­tive to Feb­ru­ary 14, 2011. The ini­tial ap­point­ment was said to be il­le­gal as Cab­i­net had no au­thor­i­ty un­der the law to ap­point an FIU di­rec­tor. Last Sep­tem­ber the com­mis­sion sought to ap­point ex­ec­u­tive court ad­min­is­tra­tor of the ju­di­cia­ry, Michelle Ann Austin, but Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ve­toed the ap­point­ment. She said then Fran­cois work was crit­i­cal in T&T's ef­forts to meet FATF stan­dards.

Fran­cois was con­firmed af­ter the com­mis­sion held fur­ther con­sul­ta­tions with the PM who main­tained her ve­to of Austin and Austin said she was no longer in­ter­est­ed in the job. In a brief com­ment to the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, Thomas said: "The com­mis­sion want­ed to be sat­is­fied that due process was prop­er­ly fol­lowed." Fran­cois' con­fir­ma­tion came at a time when T&T was be­ing asked by the Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force (FATF) to do more to deal with the is­sues of mon­ey laun­der­ing and ter­ror­ist fi­nanc­ing. FATF is an in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion set up to for­mu­late in­ter­na­tion­al poli­cies to com­bat mon­ey laun­der­ing and ter­ror­ist fi­nanc­ing. It said it was not sat­is­fied with the ac­tion plan by T&T to deal with the is­sues. It called on T&T to es­tab­lish a ful­ly op­er­a­tional FIU with su­per­vi­so­ry pow­ers.