An­tho­ny Wil­son

A re­gion­al an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing body has called on Caribbean coun­tries to "con­sid­er im­ple­ment­ing counter mea­sures to pro­tect their fi­nan­cial sys­tems from the on­go­ing mon­ey laun­der­ing and ter­ror­ist fi­nanc­ing risks em­a­nat­ing from Be­lize and Guyana."

The counter mea­sures, which amount to a fi­nan­cial black­list­ing of the coun­tries, will mean that all fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions be­tween T&T and Guyana and Be­lize will be placed un­der much greater scruti­ny, with the pos­si­bil­i­ty that wire trans­fers and oth­er pay­ments would be de­layed or de­nied.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions on the im­pact of the counter mea­sures on trade and pay­ments be­tween T&T and the af­fect­ed coun­tries, Re­pub­lic Bank ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, Nigel Bap­tiste, said: "These mea­sures will un­doubt­ed­ly neg­a­tive­ly af­fect trade and pay­ments be­tween the coun­tries as the en­hanced mon­i­tor­ing will re­sult in longer turn­around time, high­er costs and pos­si­bly the re­fusal of ac­cept­ing pay­ments where in­for­ma­tion re­quire­ments are not met.

"Where cor­re­spon­dent and oth­er banks or par­ties re­strict the types of busi­ness be­ing done, this will neg­a­tive­ly af­fect trade in­come and pay­ments and may lead to in­vestors with­draw­ing from Guyana and Be­lize."

Re­pub­lic Bank has a sig­nif­i­cant sub­sidiary in Guyana, hav­ing ac­quired 51 per cent of the share­hold­ing in Na­tion­al Bank of In­dus­try and Com­merce Ltd on No­vem­ber 1997. The sub­sidiary was of­fi­cial­ly re­brand­ed as Re­pub­lic Bank (Guyana) Ltd on June 2, 2006.

The vir­tu­al black­list­ing of Be­lize and Guyana is a di­rec­tive of the Caribbean Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force (CFATF), an or­gan­i­sa­tion com­pris­ing 29 ju­ris­dic­tions in the Caribbean Basin re­gion that have agreed to im­ple­ment in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards on An­ti-Mon­ey Laun­der­ing and Com­bat­ing the Fi­nanc­ing of Ter­ror­ism (AML/CFT).

?