Attorney General and Minister of Education, and Chairman of the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force attended the FATF Plenary held February 10 to 14, 2003 in Paris, France.
Mr. Sears was priviledged to attend this Plenary as an observer in his capacity as the Chairman of CFATF, a position he assumed in October 2002. Chairman Sears was accompanied by Ms. Rhonda Bain, the Director of legal affairs in the Office of the Attorney General and Mr. Calvin Wilson, the Executive Director of the CFATF Secretariat.
The Chairman is pleased to announce that Grenada was removed from the list of Non Cooperative Countries and Territories. Grenada is required to submit regular progress reports.
St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Guatemala remains on the list, but were praised for their progress. The FATF indicated that it was generally pleased with the progress made by St. Vincent and the Grenadines and proposed that St. Vincent and the Grenadines submit an updated Implementation Report, which it is anticipated will facilitate an on-site visit in late Spring.
The FATF expressed satisfaction with the progress made by Guatemala in enacting legislation to strengthen its anti-money laundering regime. We hope that St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Guatemala will be removed from the list during the Plenary of the FATF in June or October later this year. It is the Chairman’s goal to ensure that all members of CFATF are removed from this list.
The Plenary reviewed the progress reports of The Bahamas, Dominica, and St. Kitts and Nevis. The Plenary decided that these countries would continue to be monitored and required to submit progress reports to the FATF.
One other Chairman and the Secretaries of the other FATF styled regional organisations in Africa, Middle East, Asia-Pacific, Central and Eastern Europe and South America also attended the Plenary as observers.
The Plenary also dealt with the review of the FATF 40 Recommendations and the use of the new FATF/International Monetary Fund/World Bank (IMF/World Bank) Anti-Money Laundering and Combatting the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) Methodology.
For the past year, the FATF has been reviewing the 40 Recommendations. An invitation was extended to CFATF and the other regional FATF styled organisations to participate in this exercise. A Working Group was established by FATF to review the 40 Recommendations. This Group has been holding meetings throughout the year and met during the Plenary.
CFATF has established a working group of CFATF members to participate in this exercise. At the Plenary two officials from the Central Bank of The Bahamas, Mr. Richard Ellis, the Inspector of Banks and Trust Companies, and Ms. Rochelle Deleveaux, Legal Counsel at the Central Bank represented CFATF at the Working Group meetings.
The text of the Recommendations was revised a this meeting and will be circulated to all CFATF members in the following week. All members are urged to consider the new text and forward their observations and suggestions for amendments expeditiously to the CFATF Secretariat where they would be collated for onward transmission to the FATF Secretariat. The FATF will also participate in a further meeting of the FATF Working Group, which is tentatively scheduled for the first or second week of March 2003.
The CFATF has scheduled its next Plenary meeting for March 17 to 21, 2003 in Panama. At this meeting CFATF would further consider the draft revised 40 Recommendations in depth and submit its comments to the FATF before April 1, 2003.
The Chairman is encouraging members to continue participating at each step of this exercise prior to the finalisation of the new FATF 40 Recommendations in June 2003.
The Ministerial Council of CFATF at its special meeting held in Barbados, January 2003 did not endorse the use of the new AML/CFT Methodology in its mutual evaluation programmes at this time as it had not been adequately considered by its members.
However, CFATF acknowledged that the new Methodology document is being used by members countries in their Offshore Financial Centre and Financial Sector Assessment Programme assessments by the IMF.
Even though CFATF has taken this principled stand with the Methodology, there is significant cooperation between CFATF and the IMF which is ongoing and will enable CFATF to help shape the future global assessment using the Methodology.
Therefore, CFATF has agreed to provide the law enforcement experts for the IMF Missions to CFATF member countries. The Deputy Director of CFATF participated in IMF missions to the Netherlands Antilles and Haiti. CFATF has provided a law enforcement expert from The Bahamas for IMF’s OFC assessment of the Turks and Caicos Islands. An experienced mutual evaluation examiner from Trinidad and Tobago participated in IMF missions to Anguilla and Montserrat.
Additionally, CFATF has established a Special Working Group to work with the IMF in reviewing the Methodology.
The CFATF Secretariat is presently compiling a list of financial, legal and law enforcement experts to be sumbitted to IMF to be used in their assessment exercise.
While at the FATF Plenary, the Chairman held extensive talks with officials from the IMF and would now hold further discussions with CFATF member countries with respect to the use of the new Methodology.
At the Barbados Ministerial Meeting, Chairman Sears was given a mandate by the Ministerial Council of the CFATF to promote the convening of a global forum on money laundering, under the auspices of the United Nations with a view to a United Nations Convention on Money Laundering. This will allow for the establishment of international standards, which would be applied equally to all nations.
Chairman Sears used the opportunity of the FATF Plenary to canvas this proposal with delegates from the CFATF Group of Cooperating and Supporting Nations, which are the United States, Canada, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Mexico, as well as the Chairs and the Secretariat of the other regional FATF styled organisations and other multilateral organisations.
After attending the FATF Plenary, Chairman Sears is more committed to building upon the work of the FATF and the FATF styled regional organisations through the establishment of a global standard and its uniform application in the fight against money laundering and undertakes to continue lobbying the international community to achieve this goal.
The Nassau Guardian
