Finally, Trinidad and Tobago has enacted legislation that will pave the way for a legally constituted Financial Intelligence Unit to be established.

Although Trinidad and Tobago can boast of having one of the Region's oldest FIUs, a unit which has been in operation since April of 1997, the absence of legislation, to formalise the activities of that unit, was a major cause for concern by T&T’s 3^rd round assessors, resulting in the jurisdiction being rated as NC with Recommendation 26.  

It took a marathon session, which ended late last night, in the Senate, for all the members present to agree on the functions, powers and structure, with which the creature of this new Act will be endowed.

Along the way, many of the senators broached the bane of CFATF law enforcement examiners by raising the issue of the autonomy of the FIU, in circumstances where the bill had proposed that the Minister of Finance be the line minister for reporting functions. The fear here, was that of political interference, in the operational autonomy of the FIU. One senator even proposed that the FIU be placed under the purview of the Chief Justice.

With the passage of this Act, it is unclear what will become of the existing FIU. What is clear however is the fact that the coercive nature that it adopted is now a thing of the past because the new FIU will be purely administrative in nature.  

Interestingly, the provisions proposed in the bill were in no way inconsistent with provisions already enshrined in FIU legislation throughout the Region. One has to consider however whether the AML successes of the FIUs which are already backed by such provisions, are such that any jurisdiction enacting FIU legislation for the first time, can justify using these laws as the model upon which it builds its own FIU infrastructure.

This leads me to parrot the comments of one Senator who opined that in her view, the bill “lacked innovation�. I will just like to add that T&T’s 4^th round Mutual Evaluation will be quite interesting.

 

As I was running some of the ideas I had for this blog to one of my colleagues, she looked at me with consternation and said “Jefferson, that is a no-brainer�. The “That� being my specific intention to begin this blog by focusing on Recommendation 19 of the FATF 40 Recommendations. I smiled at her and retorted “Aha my point exactly�. 

You see, in CFATF land, and by that I mean, in the 30 Countries which make up the membership of this FSRB, it appears that this no-brainer Recommendation is receiving all the attention it ‘deserves’. Did you detect a hue of sarcasm in that statement?   Then let me re-phrase it because it is not my intention to use hints in order to make my point but rather to be as blunt and as straightforward as possible in saying that I believe that CFATF land has dropped the ball on this issue.

I don’t blame any of them though, because the ball was thrown in such a way so that for the purpose of obtaining full compliance, even those Members who were deemed to have caught it, and were rated accordingly, seem lost to the fact that potentially Recommendation 19 has the potential to be one of the most important tools in the arsenal of all Regional Financial Intelligence Units.

The approach to the implementation of Recommendation 19 is simple and all a country has to do is ‘consider’ the feasibility of implementing a system of mandatory currency transaction reporting above a fixed threshold. Well it appears that this is a rather easy way to obtain a rating of C, or this is what many Members believe. Many of them have ‘considered’ and then concluded that such a system is in no way feasible. Let me repeat something I said earlier. I don’t blame them. Are they not complying with the essential criteria of this no-brainer Recommendation?

Certainly they are. But wait, is it just me, with my law enforcement biases, which I have taken so many years to hone, or isn’t there a bigger picture here? Aren’t the Recommendations just guidelines that are to be adopted and adapted in such a way so as to achieve the common objective of preventing money laundering and terrorist financing?  Well excuse me but the 3^rd Round Mutual Evaluation Reports detail that for Recommendation 19 the adaptation of it is aimed at obtaining the ‘golden’ compliant rating.

So, I have chosen a no-brainer to start this blog. In the coming posts I will continue to develop and expand on many issues surrounding Rec. 19. In the end I am certain all will agree, that brainer or no-brainer, a different approach is needed if Members are to succeed in utilizing all the tools possible in this ongoing foray.

jclarke