Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment is go­ing af­ter mat­ters in the US—un­der the Un­ex­plained Wealth law—where a po­ten­tial US$123 mil­lion will be repa­tri­at­ed to ben­e­fit cit­i­zens.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi in­di­cat­ed this in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day say­ing pro­ceed­ings are go­ing on in the US on the sit­u­a­tion. He was pi­lot­ing a mis­cel­la­neous bill with amend­ments con­cern­ing var­i­ous laws. This in­cludes on the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit, Pro­ceeds of Crime, An­ti-Ter­ror­ism In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Cen­tral Bank and Com­pa­nies Reg­is­trar.

Al-Rawi said the Pro­ceeds of Crime law in­volved a Seized As­sets Fund which was very im­por­tant since monies from court mat­ters— in­volv­ing the Un­ex­plained Wealth laws—went in­to that fund.

He said Gov­ern­ment is now ex­pand­ing the sys­tem so that monies from in­frac­tions un­der the Pro­ceeds of Crime law will go to the ben­e­fit of so­ci­ety.

He said there are cur­rent­ly sev­er­al or­ders re­gard­ing Un­ex­plained Wealth law be­fore the courts where there are “10s and 20s of mil­lions” in­volved, plus the pro­ceed­ings with the US mat­ters.

He said funds repa­tri­at­ed to T&T will as­sist in ed­u­ca­tion, drug re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and oth­er ar­eas to ben­e­fit cit­i­zens—a crit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tion in T&T’s fi­nan­cial cir­cum­stances. He said the law would bring home jus­tice to so­ci­ety.

The pro­posed amend­ments will al­so al­low the state to list ter­ror­ist agen­cies such as ISIS, Al Qae­da and oth­ers and deal with per­sons in the same way the state froze the as­sets of Ka­reem Ibrahim who was de­clared a ter­ror­ist.

Claus­es will al­so de­bar any­one work­ing in the An­ti-Ter­ror­ism unit from dis­clos­ing con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion.

An­oth­er sec­tion calls for the FIU to in­form the Po­lice’s Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Bu­reau and the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty if the FIU is in­ves­ti­gat­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer un­der the PCA’s watch. Al-Rawi said the TTPS hasn’t been see­ing the kind of re­sults for po­lice mis­con­duct the PCA has been ad­vo­cat­ing for. The AG re­ject­ed the Law As­so­ci­a­tion’s call to hold on the bill.