The re­cent in­ter­na­tion­al con­cerns about T&T as a mon­ey-laun­der­ing haven may not be as damn­ing as they first ap­peared, but there's no ques­tion that this coun­try could and should be do­ing more to counter high-lev­el white-col­lar crime.

Ac­cord­ing to the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit (FIU) re­port for 2012, just over $638 mil­lion in dirty mon­ey trans­ac­tions passed through the coun­try's fi­nan­cial sys­tem that year.

The FIU it­self has had a rocky start, weath­er­ing pulling and tug­ging by politi­cians keen to ex­ert some con­trol over the per­son at the helm of the agency.

In the lead­er­ship role as di­rec­tor since Feb­ru­ary 2011 has been Ms Su­san Fran�ois who leads the FIU's li­ai­son role with the Caribbean Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force (CFATF), the re­gion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion that works to min­imise il­lic­it fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions in the re­gion.

But should the FIU be em­pow­ered to do more to dri­ve more ef­fec­tive and fo­cused in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to white-col­lar fi­nan­cial crime?

The FIU's man­date is to be the "pri­ma­ry in­sti­tu­tion for the col­lec­tion of fi­nan­cial in­tel­li­gence and in­for­ma­tion and the analy­sis, dis­sem­i­na­tion and ex­change of such fi­nan­cial in­tel­li­gence, this will al­so in­clude in­for­ma­tion among law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties, fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion."

It is, there­fore, prop­er­ly con­sti­tut­ed as an in­for­ma­tion-gath­er­ing and an­a­lyt­i­cal unit with a very spe­cif­ic scope to in­ves­ti­gate mon­ey laun­der­ing, fi­nanc­ing of ter­ror­ism and oth­er fi­nan­cial crimes.

Its col­lab­o­ra­tions with the CFATF aside, there's good rea­son to be con­cerned that there is like­ly to be a gap be­tween the work of the FIU and the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of lo­cal law en­force­ment that's so pro­nounced that it would be hope­ful in the ex­treme to ex­pect sig­nif­i­cant re­sults from such col­lab­o­ra­tions.

This isn't a prob­lem that's unique to T&T. When the Bernie Mad­off Ponzi scheme col­lapsed, it did so against the back­ground of ex­tend­ed and con­tin­u­ous case-mak­ing by Har­ry Markopo­los, whose ev­i­dence gath­er­ing fell on deaf ears when pre­sent­ed, in as­ton­ish­ing de­tail and specifics and on mul­ti­ple oc­ca­sions, to the US Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion.

Markopo­los was an ac­com­plished fi­nan­cial mar­kets pro­fes­sion­al, and that type of ex­per­tise is hard to find any­where in the world. Ex­pect­ing it to crop up in the Po­lice Ser­vice or any oth­er law en­force­ment agency with­out de­lib­er­ate plan­ning is sim­ply wish­ful think­ing.

Trinidad and To­ba­go has passed do­mes­tic laws in sup­port of the FIU's work, in­clud­ing the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act and the An­ti-Ter­ror­ism Act, along with sign­ing a range of in­ter­na­tion­al con­ven­tions and treaties that lu­bri­cate the in­ves­ti­ga­tion of fi­nan­cial crime.

In Oc­to­ber 2012, T&T was for­mal­ly re­moved from FATF mon­i­tor­ing, though there re­mains a short­fall of the qual­i­fied cer­ti­fied an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing spe­cial­ist that fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions are re­quired by law to hire as com­pli­ance of­fi­cers.

If this soft­en­ing so­ci­ety is go­ing to be hard­ened, it must de­vel­op the gov­er­nance and cor­po­rate will to im­ple­ment and pros­e­cute the laws it has put on the books.

That's go­ing to mean de­vel­op­ing a di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty ca­pa­ble of un­der­stand­ing and act­ing on the re­search and analy­sis of the FIU. Un­til there is pros­e­cu­tion, in­ter­na­tion­al con­cerns about this coun­try's ca­pac­i­ty to man­age mon­ey laun­der­ing and oth­er fi­nan­cial high crimes will con­tin­ue to linger.

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