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Thursday, July 3, 2025

AG ex­plains 'fol­low the mon­ey' laws...

Companies will have to account

by

20161011

Com­pa­nies that are not up to date in the Com­pa­nies Reg­istry will be struck off and stand to lose their as­sets if they can­not prop­er­ly ac­count to the courts un­der a law Gov­ern­ment is bring­ing soon to "fol­low the mon­ey" sus­tain­ing crime, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al Rawi said yes­ter­day.

He de­tailed mea­sures to "fol­low the mon­ey" of crime, which in­volves tar­get­ting white col­lar crime in busi­ness and land ac­qui­si­tions, in his con­tri­bu­tion to the 2017 Bud­get de­bate in Par­lia­ment.

"We're go­ing be­hind the mon­ey...rather than putting out a drag­net for two joints. The en­gine be­hind crime isn't be­ing at­tend­ed to. It's not just lo­cal, it has a for­eign con­text to it," he said.

The AG said the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit had iden­ti­fied $3.7 bil­lion worth of sus­pi­cious trans­ac­tions in T&T and the Caribbean Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force not­ed T&T's short­com­ings in dis­clo­sure of ben­e­fi­cial own­er­ship–who is the re­al own­er of an as­set.

He said Gov­ern­ment is in­tro­duc­ing leg­is­la­tion to "fol­low the mon­ey" over­all.

"If Trinidad and To­ba­go tru­ly wants to track crim­i­nal­i­ty, it makes sense to go af­ter peo­ple who have sus­pi­cious wealth and make them ac­count for how it was ac­quired and if you can't ac­count for it, you lose it," he said.

"But you don't lose it via the Gov­ern­ment in­ter­fer­ing, or through the crim­i­nal courts, you lose it un­der due process in the civ­il courts which can deal with things over one to three years.

"There are videos of al­leged drug lords in man­sions and we're won­der­ing how they can be so bold­faced, so it's very im­por­tant to fol­low the mon­ey by mak­ing peo­ple ex­plain their wealth."

Al Rawi said the process was start­ed with an amnesty for mat­ters in the Com­pa­ny Reg­istry which pro­vid­ed a crit­i­cal back­drop. As a re­sult, there was an im­prove­ment in com­pa­nies bring­ing an­nu­al re­turns up to date.

"But rough­ly half the com­pa­nies on the Reg­istry are in ar­rears, es­pe­cial­ly non-prof­it com­pa­nies. We said we had to clean up the Reg­istry and take ad­van­tage of the method of strik­ing them out," the AG added.

Once the dead­line pass­es to bring re­turns up to date, he said, com­pa­nies that are not up to date will have to be dealt with. There will be an ag­gres­sive ex­er­cise to strike off com­pa­nies "but not to go off with their as­sets–we in­tend to make the as­sets pass through an ac­count­able cy­cle in the courts," he ex­plained

Al Rawi gave the ex­am­ple of the 2014 case of co­caine in or­ange juice cans from T&T which had in­volved a de­funct com­pa­ny. He said monies may have come in­to that com­pa­ny.

"You can't just strike it off the Reg­istry. You strike it off and give an ac­count. Ex­plain it in a process through the civ­il courts," he said

An­oth­er as­pect of fol­low­ing the mon­ey in­volves track­ing ben­e­fi­cial own­er­ship which will have to be de­clared to the Reg­istry prompt­ly and must be up to date.

If some­one doesn't de­clare own­er­ship to the Reg­istry, this would be an of­fence sub­ject to the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act.

On in­di­vid­u­als par­tic­u­lar­ly, the AG said: "Where do do crim­i­nals hide their mon­eys? They park it in prop­er­ties,they park it in cash and in com­pa­nies,"

Al Rawi said Gov­ern­ment will short­ly be pre­sent­ing laws tar­get­ting own­er­ship in land ac­qui­si­tion that is un­de­clared.

"There are mas­sive loop­holes in the sys­tem. No strict reg­is­tra­tion re­quire­ment in cer­tain cir­cum­stances. Fraud hap­pens via iden­ti­fy theft in land trans­ac­tions," he said.

If cul­prits try to "hide" be­hind trustees, those trustees will al­so have to de­clare and say "who owns what, where and why."

The AG said the moves will rad­i­cal­ly change crime-fight­ing.

"White col­lar crime is the ven­om in the veins of cti­ti­zens and we're track­ing it for the first time. It just in­volves tight­en­ing the sys­tem," he said.


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