Ucill Cam­bridge

A fi­nan­cial in­ves­ti­ga­tor should be as­signed to every se­ri­ous crime that is in­ves­ti­gat­ed in this coun­try since fol­low­ing the mon­ey is usu­al­ly the way to get the of­fend­er, David West has said.

West, a cer­ti­fied an­ti-mon­ey-laun­der­ing spe­cial­ist (Cams), ex­plained that to solve many se­ri­ous crimes, and some blood crimes, es­pe­cial­ly those which are said to be gang re­lat­ed, you have to start with in­for­ma­tion on the vic­tim, and work back­wards.

"You look at the vic­tim, cre­ate a fi­nan­cial pro­file, look at where he has worked, if he worked, then look at his fi­nances, the peo­ple around him, that can give you an idea why he may have fall­en vic­tim." He said if that ap­proach is tak­en, if in­ves­ti­ga­tors fol­low the mon­ey, they are like­ly for find their sus­pect.

"You may find a mon­ey wire or a mon­ey trans­fer, if it takes you out of the coun­try to some­one with some sus­pect­ed drug link then you li­aise with the FIU (Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit) in that coun­try and use them to find the source," he said.

Ac­cord­ing to the third an­nu­al re­port of the Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit, there was on­ly one sus­pi­cious drug-re­lat­ed trans­ac­tion for the pe­ri­od Oc­to­ber 2011 to Sep­tem­ber 2012. This re­port was sent to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice for in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Sources with­in the law en­force­ment land­scape said this may be an un­re­al­is­tic fig­ure.

Asked about the fig­ure, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mervyn Richard­son said he has to re­ly on the sta­tis­tics of the FIU.

Com­ment­ing, West said the one thing you know about dirty mon­ey is that hold­ers must find a way to clean it up, "they would want to find a way to clean that mon­ey," and point­ed out that in ad­di­tion to the one drug-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty, the FIU re­port al­so states that there are 19 cas­es still un­der­go­ing analy­sis.

"Maybe more drug-re­lat­ed cas­es will be gen­er­at­ed from those 19," West said.

How the FIU fol­lows the mon­ey

The FIU's third an­nu­al re­port al­so out­lines the method ap­plied in fol­low­ing what might be sus­pect­ed to be dirty mon­ey.

�2 It be­gins with the re­ceipt of in­for­ma­tion on a sus­pi­cious trans­ac­tion re­port or a sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty re­port (STR/SAR).

�2 In­for­ma­tion is con­sid­ered from var­i­ous sources and in­for­mants and on re­ceiv­ing the in­for­ma­tion, the in­for­ma­tion is then eval­u­at­ed us­ing "sev­er­al da­ta sources."

The FIU has its own data­base but may in some cas­es need to seek in­for­ma­tion from var­i­ous fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and oth­er as­so­ci­at­ed or what they term "com­pe­tent au­thor­i­ties" or oth­er "re­port­ing en­ti­ties" and pub­lic sources.

Sources told the Sun­day Guardian that de­pend­ing on the lev­el of in­ves­ti­ga­tion the coun­try's in­tel­li­gence units are em­ployed, sup­pos­ed­ly af­ter seek­ing rel­e­vant per­mis­sions.

"The analy­sis of a STR/SAR by the An­a­lyt­i­cal Di­vi­sion in­cludes the com­ple­tion of an in­tel­li­gence re­port, which pro­vides a his­to­ry of the case, sources of in­for­ma­tion, and the an­a­lyst's rec­om­men­da­tion.

�2 "On com­ple­tion of the analy­sis the re­port is sub­mit­ted to the FIU di­rec­tor. It is then up to the di­rec­tor to de­ter­mine if the case pre­sent­ed should be sent to a law en­force­ment agency (LEA), usu­al­ly the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), but re­ports can al­so be sent to the comp­trol­ler of Cus­toms and Ex­cise, the chair­man of the Board of In­land Rev­enue and the chief im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer for in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

'Sani­tised re­ports from the FIU'

There is a clause with­in the op­er­a­tional pol­i­cy of the FIU that seems to war­rant some ex­pla­na­tion; it states that the sus­pi­cious trans­ac­tion or sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty re­ceived from a re­port­ing en­ti­ty "is re­tained by the FIU and is nev­er dis­sem­i­nat­ed to the law en­force­ment agen­cies or any oth­er au­thor­i­ty." It sug­gests that the FIU keeps the ini­tial pos­si­ble of­fense se­cret to it­self.

One well-placed source ex­plained that when the FIU hands over its re­port to the LEA, it is a "sani­tised re­port" that is hand­ed over.

"They give them the ba­sics and then the LEA has to go and in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter from scratch, hav­ing again to seek in­for­ma­tion al­ready ac­cessed by the FIU.

The source fur­ther ex­plained that when the FIU was set up, there was ex­pect­ed to be a clos­er align­ment with the Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau of the TTPS, "so the FIB was re­al­ly to act as the in­ves­tiga­tive arm work­ing along with the FIU, but the heads of the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions did not want the po­lice hav­ing ac­cess to any con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion com­ing out that sec­tor. They did not trust that the in­for­ma­tion would not be leaked," the source said.