Gail Alexan­der

Po­lice, the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Bu­reau (FIB) and the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit (FIU) may cur­rent­ly be ex­plor­ing who has the “miss­ing” $500 mil­lion miss­ing in pa­per $100 notes which haven’t yet been con­vert­ed to new poly­mer notes, says Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert.

Im­bert spoke about the mat­ter in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day re­ply­ing to queries. In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Paul Richards had asked what per­cent­age of the $8 bil­lion in “old” pa­per notes which had ex­ist­ed, was con­vert­ed to poly­mer up to Jan­u­ary 31.

Im­bert said at that date, the val­ue of $7.525 bil­lion in pa­per $100 bills had been con­vert­ed.

“This would be ap­prox­i­mate­ly 94 per cent of the es­ti­mat­ed $8b in pa­per-based bills that were in cir­cu­la­tion pri­or to the de­mon­eti­sa­tion process,” he said.

Richards asked if there was any mech­a­nism en­vi­sioned to iden­ti­fy and col­lect the re­main­ing per­cent­age.

Im­bert said, “I wish I could find that out too, Sen­a­tor Richards. I’d love to know who has that miss­ing $500m.”

“I as­sume through a process of au­dit­ing in terms of ban­knotes that would have been sent out to com­mer­cial banks it may be pos­si­ble to dis­cov­er who has that ex­tra $500m. But it’ll be very la­bo­ri­ous. Per­haps the po­lice, the FIB and FIU may be in­ves­ti­gat­ing this mat­ter—as we speak. I wouldn’t want to say much more.”

Richards asked if there was in­for­ma­tion if the mon­ey is in T&T or out­side. Im­bert replied, “T&T cur­ren­cy has no val­ue out­side of T&T. If some­one shipped it out, I don’t know why they’d do that so I’d have to as­sume it would have to be some­where in T&T.”

“I wouldn’t take bait from my friends to say that it’s buried un­der some­body’s house. But I think most of it would be here,” he said.

Im­bert al­so replied to a ques­tion from UNC sen­a­tor Sad­dam Ho­sein on the num­ber of poly­mer $100 notes or­dered and re­ceived by Cen­tral Bank. Im­bert said $94m worth of new poly­mer notes were bought out of which $80m have been re­ceived to date.

“I can’t give a pre­cise time to re­ceive the oth­er $14m,” he added.

He said the Cen­tral Bank would take de­liv­ery of the (rest) when re­quired to change the old notes.

“Poly­mer notes have a lifes­pan of about sev­en years as com­pared with pa­per notes which have a lifes­pan of about two to three years. Cen­tral Bank will take de­liv­ery of the re­main­ing $14m as and when ex­ist­ing notes be­come de­stroyed or worn out,” he said.