Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo has pro­claimed three pieces of leg­is­la­tion that will take ef­fect on 17 No­vem­ber, mark­ing an­oth­er phase of the Gov­ern­ment’s ef­fort to strength­en Trinidad and To­ba­go’s fi­nan­cial-crime frame­work.

The procla­ma­tions, is­sued in sep­a­rate le­gal no­tices, ac­ti­vate dif­fer­ent FATF-re­lat­ed amend­ments passed be­tween 2020 and 2025.

Through Le­gal No­tice 418, se­lect­ed sec­tions of the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (FATF Com­pli­ance) Act, 2020 are now com­ing in­to force. These amend­ments up­date sev­er­al laws, in­clud­ing the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act, the An­ti-Ter­ror­ism Act and the FIU Act, and are in­tend­ed to im­prove su­per­vi­sion, re­port­ing re­quire­ments and en­force­ment across the fi­nan­cial sec­tor.

Le­gal No­tice 419 brings in­to ef­fect sec­tions 10(a), (b) and (c) of the 2024 Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions Act. Those sec­tions cov­er changes re­lat­ing to non-prof­it reg­u­la­tion, as­set re­cov­ery and in­for­ma­tion-shar­ing, ar­eas flagged in pre­vi­ous FATF eval­u­a­tions.

The fi­nal procla­ma­tion, Le­gal No­tice 420, ac­ti­vates the en­tire Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (FATF Com­pli­ance) Act, 2025. This most re­cent set of amend­ments ex­pands oblig­a­tions for re­port­ing en­ti­ties and up­dates the pow­ers of reg­u­la­tors and law-en­force­ment agen­cies.

All three Acts re­quire pres­i­den­tial procla­ma­tion be­fore they can take ef­fect. With the same ef­fec­tive date set for each, the new rules will be im­ple­ment­ed to­geth­er as part of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s con­tin­u­ing dri­ve to mod­ernise its an­ti-mon­ey-laun­der­ing, counter-ter­ror­ism-fi­nanc­ing and pro­lif­er­a­tion-fi­nanc­ing laws.