The Bahamas will have an opportunity to protect the integrity of its offshore banking industry when Attorney General and Minister of Education Alfred Sears takes over as chairman of the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF) on Thursday. He succeeds Bonaparte Gautreaus Pineyro of the Dominican Republic.
The chairmanship of CFATF will provide The Bahamas with an opportunity to have a voice in international organizations such as FATF and OECD on issues of money laundering, said Minister Sears.
“Additionally, The Bahamas will benefit from deeper regional ties with our Caribbean partners in the fight against money laundering,” said Minister Sears, the Member of Parliament for Fort Charlotte.
The Bahamas this week, is hosting the Plenary 16th and Ministerial 8th meetings of the CFATF at the Radisson Cable Beach Resort.
CFATF is an organization of 27 states and territories of the Caribbean basin which have agreed to implement common counter-measures against money laundering.
CFATF’s main activities include self assessment of the degree of implementation of FATF and CFATF recommendations; mutual evaluation of members; and co-ordination of and participation in training and technical assistance programmes.
The mutual evaluation of The Bahamas which was conducted in July this year, headlines the agenda during the plenary sessions.
The mutual evaluation process is conducted by a team of experts, one each in the field of law, finance and law enforcement, and is led by the executive director or deputy director of CFATF.
In the case of The Bahamas, the team consists of officials from Barbados, Suriname, and Montserrat and the executive director of CFATF, Calvin Wilson.
The team conducted a range of interviews with officials in the public and private sectors in an attempt to glean a precise picture of the Bahamas’ money laundering framework.
On Thursday, the CFATF will conduct meetings between senior officials to consider issues relating to requests for information under Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties; Financial Intelligence Units in the region with the Egmont Group; and Regulators in CFATF member countries.
The Bahamian delegation to these meetings include representatives from the Office of the Attorney General, the Central Bank of the Bahamas, the Financial Inelegance Unit, the Royal Bahamas Police Force, the Compliance Commission, the Securities Commission, the Inspector of Financial and Corporate Service Providers, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Financial Services and Investment, and the Ministry of Trade and Industry.
Former Central Bank Governor, James Smith, the Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance, pointed to “continuous pressure on The Bahamas to review and revise money laundering rules or financial services rules because the international community and more particularly the regional community are continually monitoring us.
“The extent to which The Bahamas host this, we at least now have a platform from which we can say what we have been doing and what we intend to do, and get the message out there that we are still trying to find this delicate balance between developing our financial services sector on one hand and also complying with international standards with regard to regulations,” Smith said.
Minister of Financial Services and Investments, Allyson Maynard-Gibson said it is “extremely important” for the Bahamas to be hosting the CAFTF meetings at this time.
“It is extremely important for The Bahamas which is without question the leading financial services centre in this region to take the lead,” she said, “and to be seen as a leader in the financial services industry.
“The Attorney General will be able to say, as we have been saying all along, that we absolutely condemn money laundering and we will ensure as best we can that it does not exist within our shores.
“Certainly I don’t think that that message can come out of a mouth more competent than that of the Attorney General.”
Attending the meetings are delegates from Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, British virgin Islands, Brazil, Cayman Islands, Costa Rica, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Grenada, Guyana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Montserrat, the Netherlands Antilles, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, Venezuela, Canada, France, Mexico, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom the United States.
Also scheduled to attend are representatives from Cariforum, Caricom, CARTAC, CCLEC, CDB, the Commonwealth Secretariat, ECCB, EC/EU, EDCO, FATF Secretariat, GAFISUD, IADB, Interpol, OAS/CICAD,UNODCCP, UNDCP and the World Bank.
By Gladstone Thurston, Bahamas Information Services
