The se­vere na­tion­al risks as­so­ci­at­ed with fail­ing to com­bat il­lic­it fi­nance dom­i­nat­ed the agen­da at the Co-op­er­a­tive Cred­it Union League of T&T (CCULTT)’s sixth an­nu­al vir­tu­al com­pli­ance of­fi­cers’ con­fer­ence on Sep­tem­ber 25 and 26, 2025.

Nigel Stod­dard, di­rec­tor of the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence of T&T, who was one of the fea­ture speak­ers, ad­dressed the par­tic­i­pants on the dire, long-term con­se­quences of in­ter­na­tion­al non-com­pli­ance, stress­ing that a coun­try black­list­ed by bod­ies like the Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force (FATF) would not on­ly suf­fer eco­nom­ic col­lapse but al­so face a surge in crime.

He ex­plic­it­ly de­tailed how the “lin­ger­ing stig­ma” of black­list­ing would trig­ger job loss­es, wide­spread in­fla­tion due to im­port re­stric­tions, slowed eco­nom­ic growth, and a loss of for­eign trade in­flu­ence.

Most alarm­ing­ly, he stressed that re­strict­ing the for­mal fi­nan­cial sys­tem due to black­list­ing would mag­ni­fy the risk of il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ty, as crim­i­nal el­e­ments would be in­cen­tivised to by­pass the weak­ened sys­tem al­to­geth­er.

In Ju­ly this year Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo an­nounced that T&T was on track to be re­moved from the Eu­ro­pean Union’s tax black­list, af­ter earn­ing an over­all rat­ing of “large­ly com­pli­ant” in a sec­ond-round re­view by the Glob­al Fo­rum on Trans­paren­cy and Ex­change of In­for­ma­tion for Tax Pur­pos­es.

Stod­dard’s ad­dress was al­so a de­fin­i­tive call for cred­it union boards to en­sure rig­or­ous vig­i­lance and com­pli­ance to pro­tect the na­tion’s fi­nan­cial in­tegri­ty from be­ing used for mon­ey laun­der­ing, ter­ror­ism, or pro­lif­er­a­tion fi­nanc­ing.

Shift­ing the con­fer­ence’s fo­cus to­ward ac­tion­able strate­gies, Brent McFee, act­ing CEO of the T&T Mort­gage Bank, placed heavy em­pha­sis on the op­er­a­tional de­mands now fac­ing the cred­it union sec­tor’s com­pli­ance pro­fes­sion­als.

He stressed that suc­cess in coun­ter­ing mon­ey laun­der­ing and il­le­gal fi­nan­cial ac­tiv­i­ties hinges on three in­ter­con­nect­ed pil­lars: ca­pac­i­ty, proac­tiv­i­ty and col­lab­o­ra­tion.

McFee al­so called for com­pli­ance of­fi­cers to ded­i­cate them­selves to con­tin­u­al­ly build­ing their pro­fes­sion­al ca­pac­i­ty and mov­ing de­ci­sive­ly to­ward proac­tive so­lu­tions as he high­light­ed the non-ne­go­tiable im­por­tance of forg­ing strate­gic al­liances and re­la­tion­ships with oth­er stake­hold­ers in the fi­nan­cial com­mu­ni­ty.

This col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach, he ar­gued, is vi­tal to en­sure in­sti­tu­tions learn from each oth­er’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties and suc­cess­es, there­by strength­en­ing their col­lec­tive in­ter­nal process­es and in­spir­ing greater pub­lic con­fi­dence in cred­it unions.

The se­vere threat posed by so­phis­ti­cat­ed fi­nan­cial crim­i­nals was un­der­scored by Mas­ter­Card’s Cinthia Levaro, vice-pres­i­dent, ad­vi­sors and con­sult­ing ser­vices, as well as Mas­ter­Card’s fi­nan­cial crimes man­ag­er for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, Cate­ri­na Cri­a­do, whose pre­sen­ta­tion de­liv­ered a sober­ing look at the glob­al state of mon­ey laun­der­ing.

They pre­sent­ed sta­tis­tics demon­strat­ing that the alarm­ing world­wide in­crease in il­lic­it fi­nan­cial flows is now sig­nif­i­cant­ly fu­elled by vir­tu­al as­sets and the ex­ploita­tion of vul­ner­a­ble sec­tors through ad­vanced tech­nol­o­gy and per­sis­tent reg­u­la­to­ry gaps.

In quan­ti­fy­ing the scale of the cri­sis, the pre­sen­ters cit­ed es­ti­mates from the Unit­ed Na­tions, which sug­gest­ed that the to­tal amount of mon­ey laun­dered glob­al­ly each year falls be­tween US$800 bil­lion and US$2 tril­lion, rep­re­sent­ing a mas­sive two to five per cent of the world’s GDP.

The most vul­ner­a­ble sec­tors named were re­al es­tate, with lux­u­ry prop­er­ties be­ing viewed as a clas­sic way to hide large amounts of il­lic­it mon­ey.

A 2025 re­port by the US De­part­ment of the Trea­sury found that 74 per cent of ma­jor mon­ey laun­der­ing schemes in­volved re­al es­tate trans­ac­tions.

In the area of in­ter­na­tion­al trade, 46 per cent of cas­es in­volve trade-based laun­der­ing, while cryp­tocur­ren­cies amount­ed to US$40.9 bil­lion used in il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties.

The ex­ec­u­tives al­so rec­om­mend­ed that com­pli­ance of­fi­cers con­tin­ue to strength­en their due dili­gence over­sight to pro­tect their or­gan­i­sa­tions.

Chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer of the Co-op­er­a­tive Cred­it Union League Di­anne Joseph al­so ex­pressed her con­cern about the emerg­ing trends in the risk of en­gag­ing in cryp­tocur­ren­cies/vir­tu­al as­sets, which re­quire a lev­el of mon­i­tor­ing and over­sight to en­sure that there is no un­nec­es­sary loss to mem­bers.

She not­ed that emerg­ing trends in vir­tu­al as­sets (VAs) show sig­nif­i­cant in­no­va­tion and in­sti­tu­tion­al adop­tion, but these de­vel­op­ments are ac­com­pa­nied by grow­ing and evolv­ing risks reg­u­la­tors that in­dus­try bod­ies like the Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force (FATF) are work­ing to ad­dress. But gaps re­main.

Joseph out­lined that there is an in­creased il­lic­it fi­nan­cial risk as crim­i­nals are in­creas­ing­ly ex­ploit­ing vir­tu­al as­sets for mon­ey laun­der­ing and ter­ror­ist fi­nanc­ing, adding that the FATF had re­port­ed that the use of sta­ble­coins by il­lic­it ac­tors is on the rise.

Sta­ble­coins are a type of cryp­tocur­ren­cy de­signed to main­tain a sta­ble val­ue by peg­ging to fi­at cur­ren­cies, com­modi­ties, or fi­nan­cial in­stru­ments, aim­ing to of­fer a less volatile al­ter­na­tive to cryp­tocur­ren­cies like Bit­coin.

Joseph main­tained it is im­por­tant for com­pli­ance of­fi­cers to stay in­formed about reg­u­la­tions, tech­nolo­gies, and risks that are evolv­ing rapid­ly, stat­ing that they must reg­u­lar­ly up­date knowl­edge and be aware of emerg­ing scams as well as nev­er make pay­ments or share sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion with peo­ple met on so­cial me­dia or mes­sag­ing apps.

The league’s views on the need for con­tin­u­ous strength­en­ing of the due dili­gence and en­hanced due dili­gence re­quire­ments were sup­port­ed by Sgt Elvin Mings of the Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Branch, who shared that the guide­lines, as out­lined in the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act, ad­dress the is­sue of oth­er crimes that re­main very much ac­tive in T&T. These in­clude hu­man traf­fick­ing, cor­rup­tion and bribery, rob­bery and theft. It there­fore places the bur­den on boards to en­sure that com­pli­ance is up­held.

He quot­ed Sec­tion 27 of the Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons Act which states that a body cor­po­rate which com­mits an of­fence against this Act is li­able on con­vic­tion to a fine of five mil­lion dol­lars. As such, in the in­ter­est of the fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor and the coun­try, com­pli­ance must be up­per­most in the minds of each and every leader.

The league rep­re­sents 133 cred­it unions and 763,000 mem­bers and over­sees 20 bil­lion in as­sets.

This year’s theme—Pur­su­ing Com­pli­ance in the New Era—Joseph said was more than sym­bol­ic, stat­ing that it re­flect­ed the ur­gency of a shift­ing fi­nan­cial land­scape.