GAIL ALEXAN­DER

The Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force (FATF) has re­moved T&T from its grey list and con­clud­ed that this coun­try is no longer sub­ject to ac­tive mon­i­tor­ing.

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Min­istry an­nounced this yes­ter­day.

FATF is an in­ter-gov­ern­men­tal body which sets stan­dards for com­bat­ing mon­ey laun­der­ing, ter­ror­ist fi­nanc­ing and oth­er re­lat­ed threats to the in­tegri­ty of the in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial sys­tem.

The min­istry stat­ed TT had failed the FATF’s mu­tu­al eval­u­a­tion process in Jan­u­ary 2015 un­der the past ad­min­is­tra­tion and was placed on a grey list in 2017.

How­ev­er, FATF cleared TT this month.

“The Gov­ern­ment is pleased to an­nounce this mile­stone achieve­ment which means TT wasn’t black­list­ed by FATF and is now in good rat­ings on the in­ter­na­tion­al front,” the min­istry added.

The process in­volved four years of “in­tense di­a­logue” the min­istry stat­ed, “This con­clud­ed with an in­ten­sive two-day on-site ex­am­i­na­tion in TT by FATF dur­ing Jan­u­ary 6-7, 2020 with a del­e­ga­tion led by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al with rep­re­sen­ta­tions from key state en­ti­ties.”

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi was in Paris, France all week dur­ing FATF’s Jan­u­ary 16/21 ple­nary meet­ing. He spoke to FATF del­e­gates on TT’s sys­tem­at­ic re­form.

The min­istry stat­ed FATF Pres­i­dent, Xi­ang­min Liu, con­grat­u­lat­ed the AG and not­ed that TT has strength­ened the ef­fec­tive­ness of its an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing (AML) and counter-ter­ror­ism fi­nanc­ing (CML)regime.

The min­istry stat­ed that in Jan­u­ary 2015 - un­der the then PP Gov­ern­ment- TT was the first mem­ber of the Caribbean Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force (CFATF) to un­der­go FATF ‘s mu­tu­al eval­u­a­tion (peer re­view) process. The min­istry added TT “ failed mis­er­ably” in its as­sess­ment of reg­u­la­to­ry laws and mea­sures and the pub­lic wasn’t told by the then Gov­ern­ment.

The Min­istry said the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment dri­ven by its an­ti-crime Plan to take the prof­it out of crime, at­tempt­ed to im­prove TT’s rat­ing on the in­ter­na­tion­al front, led by Al-Rawi. The min­istry pi­lot­ed and im­ple­ment­ed mea­sures to en­sure trans­paren­cy in land, cash and busi­ness trans­ac­tions to di­rect­ly tar­get ram­pant cor­rup­tion, fraud and crim­i­nal­i­ty in TT. This re­sult­ed in the en­act­ment of 23 pieces of AML/CFT leg­is­la­tion fol­lowed by op­er­a­tional­iza­tion, which it said the Op­po­si­tion didn’t sup­port.