Gail Alexan­der

When the Low­er House meets to­mor­row, Gov­ern­ment will be "cut­ting it close" in seek­ing to pass amend­ments to two an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing bills to meet a dead­line of to­mor­row set by an in­ter­na­tion­al au­thor­i­ty. MPs are ex­pect­ed to agree to the amend­ments which were made in the Sen­ate on Mon­day and Tues­day to the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit and Pro­ceeds of Crime bills.

Gov­ern­ment mem­bers, who pi­lot­ed both sets of leg­is­la­tion in both Hous­es of Par­lia­ment in re­cent days, said the bills were need­ed for T&T to meet the rec­om­men­da­tions of the glob­al Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force. UNC's Wade Mark, in the Sen­ate on Mon­day, said T&T stands to be black­list­ed if the leg­is­la­tion was not passed by to­mor­row, when FATF holds a meet­ing in Paris. Sev­er­al coun­tries have been black­list­ed by FATF for non-im­ple­men­ta­tion of rec­om­men­da­tions.

The Gov­ern­ment, up to yes­ter­day, did not de­ny the Fri­day dead­line. The Gov­ern­ment's move to present the bills to Par­lia­ment at the "11th hour," as Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors said this week, was one of the ma­jor com­plaints in de­bate. Spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty votes were re­quired for pas­sage of both bills. How­ev­er, a gov­ern­ment spokesman said yes­ter­day that amend­ments to bills be­ing done by the House to­mor­row, on­ly need­ed agree­ment and did not re­quire a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty.

The sit­u­a­tion, there­fore, did not re­quire all PNM MPs to be present at to­mor­row's sit­ting, they added. Fi­nance Min­is­ter Karen Tesheira–who pi­lot­ed the FIU bill last Wednes­day in the House–left the next day for a World Bank con­fer­ence and is due home next week. Op­po­si­tion chief whip Dr Hamza Rafeeq said the Gov­ern­ment had ap­proved amend­ments to sev­er­al pre­vi­ous spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty bills with­out us­ing a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty. "But we've al­ways said if a bill re­quires a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty for pas­sage, so too should any amend­ment...The on­ly way to chal­lenge this may be in court," Rafeeq said yes­ter­day. For House de­bate of the FIU bill last week, the Gov­ern­ment pulled out all the stops– re­port­ed in Sat­ur­day's Pub­lic Af­fairs col­umn –to en­sure its MPs were present for the spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty vote. Sev­er­al Op­po­si­tion MPs will be ab­sent from to­mor­row's sit­ting.