Richard Lord

Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al Su­san Fran­cois has been ap­point­ed to act as di­rec­tor of the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit of Trinidad and To­ba­go (FIU). This was re­vealed by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives dur­ing yes­ter­day's de­bate on an amend­ment to the FIU Bill. The FIU was es­tab­lished to im­ple­ment mon­ey laun­der­ing pre­ven­tion ini­tia­tives of the Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force (FATF).

Ram­lo­gan's rev­e­la­tion was made as the con­tro­ver­sy over the ap­point­ment and dis­missal of the first di­rec­tor-des­ig­nate of the FIU, David West, con­tin­ues. "We have ap­point­ed, Mr Speak­er, some­one to act in that po­si­tion so that we can cross these le­gal and ad­min­is­tra­tive hur­dles un­til we stream­line and ra­tio­nalise the FIU," Ram­lo­gan stressed. In a di­rect ref­er­ence to the ap­point­ment of West by the for­mer PNM gov­ern­ment, Ram­lo­gan added: "We did not take some­body from crime prac­tice and give them a work." He said she was an "em­i­nent le­gal of­fi­cer and pub­lic per­son."

He said Fran­cois was a "dis­tin­guished pub­lic ser­vant, who is an at­tor­ney of the high­est cal­i­bre, the hold­er of a Bach­e­lor of Laws de­gree, a lec­tur­er at the Hugh Wood­ing Law School and a cer­ti­fied me­di­a­tor. Ram­lo­gan said he "per­son­al­ly" spoke with the peo­ple who rec­om­mend­ed her for the job-Jus­tice Rol­ston Nel­son, judge of the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice, and Jus­tice Char­maine Pem­ber­ton, of the High Court of T&T.