Gail Alexan­der

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert was "out of place" to ask First Cit­i­zens bank for a re­port on com­pli­ance with fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tion reg­u­la­tions, since the Cen­tral Bank is the lo­cal bank's reg­u­la­to­ry body to whom they re­port, for­mer min­is­ter of fi­nance Mar­i­ano Browne says.

Browne was com­ment­ing yes­ter­day on moves by Im­bert fol­low­ing Plan­ning Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is' claim of "breach of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty" against state-owned First Cit­i­zens and the clo­sure of her ac­counts there.

This fol­lowed me­dia ques­tions about a large de­posit she made at the bank, her con­fir­ma­tion of a cash de­posit of $93,000 and al­le­ga­tions that she didn't do the re­quired source-of-funds de­c­la­ra­tion. How­ev­er, she said that this was done.

Im­bert sub­se­quent­ly said he had asked First Cit­i­zens for a re­port on com­pli­ance re­gard­ing fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tion reg­u­la­tions. At Thurs­day's Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley fu­elled the is­sue when he said that he couldn't trust First Cit­i­zens with his per­son­al in­for­ma­tion.

But Browne, ex­press­ing con­cern about the sit­u­a­tion, said Robin­son-Reg­is has av­enues for ac­tion and is en­ti­tled to pur­sue them if she choos­es. How­ev­er, he said the Fi­nance Min­is­ter didn't have the right to in­ter­fere, since it was a per­son­al mat­ter and didn't re­quire the in­ter­ven­tion of any Gov­ern­ment par­ty.

Browne said the min­is­ter on­ly had over­sight of the health and struc­ture of the fi­nan­cial sys­tem, which was the very rea­son the Gov­ern­ment in­ter­vened in the cre­ation of First Cit­i­zens years ago.

"The min­is­ter has over­all re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to look af­ter the strength of the struc­ture and econ­o­my and must be dis­creet and man­age sit­u­a­tions with sen­si­tiv­i­ty," Browne said.

Say­ing it was wrong for Im­bert to get in­to pub­lic pol­i­cy is­sues by seek­ing such a re­port from First Cit­i­zens in the man­ner he had, he added, "He's com­plete­ly out of place, not un­der­stand­ing his re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. The en­tire sit­u­a­tion re­quires for­bear­ance and pa­tience and should have been han­dled more del­i­cate­ly."

Browne said Im­bert's re­quest for a re­port from the bank–where Cen­tral Bank was the reg­u­la­to­ry body–could al­so un­der­mine trust in the bank, since mem­bers of the pub­lic may feel if the Gov­ern­ment can source in­for­ma­tion from the bank oth­er in­for­ma­tion about peo­ple's loans, ac­counts, and oth­er in­for­ma­tion, might al­so be ob­tained.

Yes­ter­day, the Cen­tral Bank of T&T (CBTT), re­ply­ing to T&T Guardian queries about which ju­ris­dic­tion banks fall un­der– CBTT or Min­istry of Fi­nance–con­firmed that banks are li­censed to con­duct op­er­a­tions by the CBTT.

Asked if the min­istry can seek re­ports from banks on com­pli­ance with fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tions, CBTT stat­ed that its Fi­nan­cial In­sti­tu­tions Su­per­vi­sion De­part­ment is the unit that mon­i­tors com­pli­ance with the oblig­a­tions of li­censed in­sti­tu­tions.

On whether the CBTT is look­ing in­to the Robin­son-Reg­is/First Cit­i­zens is­sue and if she had filed a com­plaint with CBTT, the CBTT stat­ed, "Is­sues that need to be re­solved be­tween clients and banks are gen­er­al­ly brought to the at­ten­tion of the Of­fice of the Fi­nan­cial Ser­vices Om­buds­man (OF­SO) or the Cen­tral Bank.

"Con­fi­den­tial­i­ty pro­vi­sions pre­vent the OF­SO and Cen­tral Bank from giv­ing in­for­ma­tion on whether or not such re­ports are made or any oth­er as­pects of such mat­ters."

Bank­ing sec­tor ex­perts al­so yes­ter­day point­ed out that First Cit­i­zens isn't 100 per cent gov­ern­ment-owned, since the Gov­ern­ment on­ly has 78 per cent share­hold­ing.

An of­fi­cial said, "In a sit­u­a­tion of a bank be­ing 100 per cent state-owned the own­er can ask about things, but when the bank be­comes a pub­lic com­pa­ny–like FCB is–and the State is just one of sev­er­al share­hold­ers, you can't ask for in­for­ma­tion like that. All share­hold­ers get the in­for­ma­tion at the same time, not just one; and one share­hold­er can­not know some­one's busi­ness since that would com­pro­mise every­thing."

Im­bert didn't re­ply to emailed queries on the is­sue.

Busi­ness sec­tor con­cerned...

T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Rolph Bal­go­b­in said yes­ter­day he couldn't com­ment on the specifics of the First Cit­i­zens mat­ter since he wasn't suf­fi­cient­ly in­formed.

But, he said, "What I can ob­serve is con­fi­dence is in­te­gral to the suc­cess­ful op­er­a­tion of the bank as this is a very im­por­tant in­dige­nous in­sti­tu­tion.

"It's very im­por­tant that all the par­ties in­volved un­der­stand what's at stake here and act ac­cord­ing­ly as con­fi­dence is some­thing that takes years to build–and mo­ments to de­stroy."

Am­cham Cham­ber pres­i­dent Ravi Suryade­vara said, "A large cash trans­ac­tion, as re­port­ed, is un­usu­al for an in­di­vid­ual and in most ju­ris­dic­tions would have a prob­a­bil­i­ty of fur­ther en­quiry.

"How­ev­er, all per­sons have a rea­son­able ex­pec­ta­tion of pri­va­cy, even if a process of fur­ther re­view is un­der­tak­en. Fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions should al­so al­ways have ad­e­quate pro­ce­dures to pro­tect cus­tomers' pri­va­cy. How­ev­er, as with any sys­tem, in­di­vid­u­als with­in can un­der­mine these pro­ce­dures. We are there­fore ex­pec­tant that the in­sti­tu­tion will deal with this ap­pro­pri­ate­ly and await the de­ter­mi­na­tion of what tran­spired."

On the po­ten­tial im­pact of the over­all sit­u­a­tion–in­clud­ing Gov­ern­ment's crit­i­cism of the First Cit­i­zens–on the fi­nan­cial sys­tem, he said, "The greater sub­stan­tive is­sue fac­ing the fi­nan­cial sys­tem and coun­try is the wider rubric of the Fourth Round Com­pli­ance Re­view of the Caribbean Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force, for which T&T is the present chair. With­in this com­pli­ance regime for an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing and counter-ter­ror­ism fi­nanc­ing, deal­ing with po­lit­i­cal­ly ex­posed per­sons (PEPS) and ex­hi­bi­tion of en­force­ment of leg­is­la­tion through pros­e­cu­tion are cru­cial el­e­ments amongst the oth­er re­quire­ments."

He added, "Greater com­pli­ance would al­so mean, as Am­cham T&T has ar­tic­u­lat­ed in past sub­mis­sions to the Gov­ern­ment, im­prove­ments to the FIU, leg­isla­tive­ly and re­source wise. Such im­prove­ments will al­low the FIU to be more ef­fec­tive in re­view­ing sus­pi­cious trans­ac­tions and mak­ing de­ter­mi­na­tions on ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion, in­clud­ing pros­e­cu­tion if nec­es­sary.

"In the ab­sence of this, in ad­di­tion to the in­ter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion­al and busi­ness reper­cus­sions, too much room is left for wrong­do­ers to es­cape. Fur­ther, in the ab­sence of a de­ter­mi­na­tion on mat­ters flagged as sus­pi­cious, much room is left for spec­u­la­tion and rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age to per­sons en­gaged in le­git­i­mate trans­ac­tions. This forms part of the es­sen­tial dis­cus­sions that Am­cham T&T con­tin­ues to pur­sue with the Gov­ern­ment and oth­er key stake­hold­ers."