Gail Alexan­der

The Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit (FIU) has ob­tained a court or­der against Varona Lim­it­ed, al­leged­ly linked to a casi­no gam­ing fa­cil­i­ty, re­gard­ing en­force­ment of an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing and counter-fi­nanc­ing of ter­ror­ism laws.

The Fi­nance Min­istry is­sued a state­ment on that yes­ter­day, say­ing the mat­ter was its third High Court Or­der against list­ed busi­ness­es.

It was al­so the first or­der of its kind for en­force­ment of An­ti-Mon­ey Laun­der­ing and Counter Fi­nanc­ing of Ter­ror­ism de­fi­cien­cies against one of its su­per­vised en­ti­ties. The is­sue falls un­der Sec­tion 18H (8) of the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit of T&T for breach­es of the Fi­nan­cial Oblig­a­tions Reg­u­la­tions (2010).Ac­cord­ing to com­pa­ny lookup web­site, a com­pa­ny bear­ing the same name as Varona Ltd is de­scribed as a pri­vate Port-of-Spain busi­ness and night­club lo­cat­ed at Fred­er­ick Street. A num­ber list­ed for that com­pa­ny went unan­swered.

When T&T Guardian vis­it­ed the lo­ca­tion yes­ter­day the premis­es were emp­ty.

A for sale/rent sign was up. A spokesman in con­nec­tion with the sign said they were in­volved in the rental/sale on­ly and couldn't speak for the "Laugh­ing Bud­dha" busi­ness that had moved out some time ago. They al­so said the sign was up since the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry which rent­ed the up­stairs of the build­ing had al­so moved out. A Face­book page of Varona Ltd was blank.

Caribbean­Jobs site de­scribed the com­pa­ny as be­ing found­ed in 1999 by a "Kuala Lumpur par­ent com­pa­ny" and it was in the "hos­pi­tal­i­ty and gam­ing in­dus­tries," fea­tur­ing a "Las Ve­gas style casi­no."

That ar­ti­cle al­lud­ed to a Club de Ve­gas" pri­vate mem­bers' en­ti­ty and casi­no. Sub­sidiaries were not­ed in New­town, cen­tral and east Trinidad. Calls to sev­er­al list­ed phone num­bers for Varona Ltd en­ti­ties on Fred­er­ick Street, which had fea­tured Japan­ese cui­sine, went unan­swered.

The min­istry said Varona Ltd was sub­ject to a Ju­ly 2015 FIU di­rec­tive iden­ti­fy­ing a num­ber of breach­es of the Fi­nan­cial Oblig­a­tions Reg­u­la­tions and spec­i­fy­ing time­lines to rem­e­dy.

"Up­on the fail­ure of Varona Lim­it­ed to com­ply with the di­rec­tive, the FIU, in ac­cor­dance with Sec­tion 18H (8) of the FIU Act, ap­plied to the High Court for an or­der to com­pel com­pli­ance."

The min­istry stat­ed: "This or­der fur­ther en­hances the FIU's ef­forts to ef­fec­tive­ly su­per­vise busi­ness­es to en­sure com­pli­ance with Fi­nan­cial Oblig­a­tion Reg­u­la­tions aimed at ef­fec­tive im­ple­men­ta­tion of sys­tems/con­trols for the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and mit­i­ga­tion of risk for mon­ey laun­der­ing and fi­nanc­ing of ter­ror­ism oc­cur­ring through the list­ed busi­ness sec­tors."