Banks in this coun­try could face fur­ther risks if in­ter­na­tion­al banks are re­luc­tant to con­duct busi­ness with them be­cause cer­tain leg­is­la­tion is not in force in this coun­try.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi said this is at the heart of Gov­ern­ment’s calls for Op­po­si­tion sup­port for the pas­sage of the In­come Tax Amend­ment leg­is­la­tion.

“We are al­ready be­ing de-risked,” Al-Rawi said fol­low­ing an In­ter­na­tion­al Men’s Day host­ed by the Bankers’ As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s for male NGOs yes­ter­day.

“There are cor­re­spon­dent re­la­tion­ships that are al­ready in jeop­ardy and you can ask the Bankers’ As­so­ci­a­tion, don’t ask me. They will tell you that their cor­re­spond­ing banks have al­ready ap­plied en­hanced, due dili­gence mech­a­nisms or some banks have said they’re not do­ing busi­ness with you.”

The AG added: “We have to be seen as a coun­try in say­ing that we will take a pos­i­tive step, we are on the right track. It was by work we have done in CFATF and FATF that we are head­ed in the right di­rec­tion. Re­mem­ber this is a con­stant oblig­a­tion, and it con­stant­ly evolves.” Ac­cord­ing to Al-Rawi, T&T is be­ing mon­i­tored by both the Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force (FATF) and the Caribbean Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force (CFATF) and should be mov­ing to pass the leg­is­la­tion.

The AG said the Op­po­si­tion, when in gov­ern­ment, had “com­mit­ted T&T by Cab­i­net de­ci­sion to the Glob­al Fo­rum en­try, and they left us in non-com­pli­ance, with­out hav­ing ne­go­ti­at­ed any of the in­ter­na­tion­al treaties that we need­ed. There were 13 of them to be ne­go­ti­at­ed and not one of them were.”

He said be­com­ing com­pli­ant in­volves a process that “starts with the in­come tax amend­ments, then it works our way in­to the sign­ing of the mul­ti­lat­er­al treaties.”

Al-Rawi not­ed that of the 10 claus­es, the Op­po­si­tion had raised an is­sue with on­ly one clause in their mi­nor­i­ty re­port and Gov­ern­ment has tak­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to draft the amend­ment that meets with that. He said the Op­po­si­tion al­so asked Gov­ern­ment to look at the South African leg­is­la­tion deal­ing with the is­sue.

“And we did. That South African leg­is­la­tion, we’ve said, is in fact not quite what you want be­cause South Africa has not had it’s fourth round mu­tu­al eval­u­a­tion, and they are there­fore not a good ex­am­ple to be fol­low­ing. But nonethe­less, if this is what it will take for the Op­po­si­tion to say yes we’ve done it in any event,” the AG said.

“It re­al­ly is an im­por­tant event. It is crit­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive for T&T. We can­not af­ford to con­tin­ue in a state of non-com­pli­ance.”