Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath is con­fi­dent that T&T's in­ter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion will not suf­fer af­ter French Pres­i­dent Nicholas Sarkozy black­list­ed T&T as a tax haven which did not meet fi­nan­cial trans­paren­cy stan­dards. Speak­ing to re­porters af­ter the open­ing of the re­fur­bished fish land­ing site at Erin on Fri­day, Bharath said the Gov­ern­ment was work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly with the Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force (FATF) to sat­is­fy all in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards. The FATF is part of the Eu­ro­pean Union's ac­tion plan to com­bat ter­ror­ism by end­ing bank se­cre­cy. Bharath said the sit­u­a­tion, which is of grave con­cern, was in­her­it­ed by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship. He said a team from the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty will be fly­ing out to Mex­i­co next week to dis­cuss the nec­es­sary reg­u­la­tions with of­fi­cials from FATF.

"We are do­ing every­thing we can to sat­is­fy the FATF reg­u­la­tions which is tied to this is­sue. This falls un­der the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. I know that the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty is work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly with the Min­istry of Fi­nance to re­solve some of these long out­stand­ing is­sues," he said. "A lot of these is­sues we in­her­it­ed and we are try­ing to work as quick­ly as we can to try and reg­u­larise all the ar­eas where we have been black­list­ed. "It is un­der con­trol and it was dis­cussed yes­ter­day. All of the out­stand­ing is­sues we are deal­ing with it and I don't think there is go­ing to be any fur­ther is­sues." Asked about the im­pact of Sarkozy's state­ments on T&T's rep­u­ta­tion, Bharath said: "I don't think this has af­fect­ed our rep­u­ta­tion in­ter­na­tion­al­ly at all at this point in time. What will neg­a­tive­ly af­fect us is if we don't cor­rect the is­sues."

He said the process of reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion start­ed with the ap­point­ment of a di­rec­tor of the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit (FIU). "As you know there have been some con­tro­ver­sy with re­gards to that, but we are work­ing along with FATF," Bharath said. Last week, at the end of the G20 sum­mit in Cannes, France, Sarkozy warned that tax havens would be shunned by the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. He named 11 coun­tries that failed to meet trans­paren­cy stan­dards. They are An­tigua/Bar­bu­da, Bar­ba­dos, Botswana, Brunei, Pana­ma, Sey­chelles, Trinidad and To­ba­go, Uruguay, Van­u­a­ta, Switzer­land and Liecht­en­stein.