Guyana says it will en­act a slew of amend­ments to its ex­tra­di­tion laws which will make it eas­i­er for ex­tra­di­tions to take place from and to the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) coun­try.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs, Anil Nand­lall SC, ad­dress­ing the Caribbean Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force (CFATF) Work­ing Group on FATF Is­sues (WG­FI) here on Tues­day, said that the Ir­faan Ali gov­ern­ment is hop­ing to by next week to en­act the leg­is­la­tion, which he said would al­so be help­ful in the ex­tra­di­tion of peo­ple to and from the Unit­ed States.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs, Anil Nand­lall SC, ad­dress­ing the Caribbean Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force (CFATF) Work­ing Group on FATF Is­sues

“We have al­so made great im­prove­ments in the fields of com­bat­ing pro­lif­er­a­tion fi­nanc­ing and ter­ror­ism fi­nanc­ing (AML/CFT), as well as hav­ing a well-func­tion­ing in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion regime, par­tic­u­lar­ly through our Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit (FIU). Our FIU is now a mem­ber of the Egmont Group,” Nand­lall told the CFATF 58th Ple­nary and Work­ing Group Meet­ings.

He told the meet­ing that the mu­tu­al eval­u­a­tion process is an in­volved one, te­dious and re­quires much fo­cus and ded­i­ca­tion and that Guyana has com­plet­ed a num­ber of risk as­sess­ments, of which co­or­di­nat­ed ac­tions and re­spons­es have fol­lowed.

“These in­clude a leg­isla­tive agen­da that sought to achieve rat­ings of at least large­ly com­pli­ant in all of the 40 Rec­om­men­da­tions, and use of our na­tion­al AML/CFT au­thor­i­ty to strength­en the ca­pac­i­ties of su­per­vi­so­ry, com­pe­tent and law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties through tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance and train­ing from our in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners.

“Un­doubt­ed­ly, while we may not have the per­fect regime, no one can fault the ef­forts demon­stra­bly ex­hib­it­ed thus far. This is cou­pled with a clear and set­tled will and in­tent to com­bat mon­ey laun­der­ing, ter­ror­ism fi­nanc­ing and pro­lif­er­a­tion fi­nanc­ing in every sphere of na­tion­al life,” the Guyana At­tor­ney gen­er­al said.

He said Guyana has the struc­tur­al un­der­pin­nings, tools and ac­tions to il­lus­trate that in most ar­eas, “we have achieved at least mod­er­ate to sub­stan­tial rat­ings of ef­fec­tive­ness, with on­ly ma­jor or mod­er­ate im­prove­ments need­ed, based on the As­sess­ment Team’s find­ings, as well as a hor­i­zon­tal re­view of oth­er MERs in the FATF and CFATF net­work.

“We recog­nise that while the cost of com­pli­ance is high, the con­se­quences of not com­ply­ing is not an op­tion. Re­sources, though scarce, are ad­e­quate­ly bud­get­ed for an­nu­al­ly to im­prove Guyana’s AML/CFT ar­chi­tec­ture. I pledge our gov­ern­ment’s un­equiv­o­cal and un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to this cause.”

Nand­lall said that al­though the Guyanese econ­o­my and in­fra­struc­ture are un­der­go­ing trans­for­ma­tive changes, he want­ed to take the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­mind del­e­gates that not so long ago, Guyana faced tremen­dous eco­nom­ic chal­lenges.

“Ad­di­tion­al­ly, while we have the largest land­mass in the Caribbean re­gion, we are one of the most un­der­pop­u­lat­ed na­tion per capi­ta in the con­text of South Amer­i­ca and be­yond with a pop­u­la­tion of just 800,000 per­sons.”

He said Guyana is cur­rent­ly con­fronting an ex­is­ten­tial threat from its west­ern neigh­bour Venezuela, which is claim­ing two-thirds of Guyana’s sov­er­eign ter­ri­to­ry.

“Guyana has had to deal with bel­li­cose threats of ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­va­sions and a pur­port­ed le­gal an­nex­a­tion of two-thirds of its ter­ri­to­ry by Venezuela. The mat­ter is cur­rent­ly at the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ).’

Nand­lall said that the CARI­COM coun­try is still pri­mar­i­ly a cash-based so­ci­ety and is not an off­shore and com­pa­ny for­ma­tion ju­ris­dic­tion.

He said le­gal for­ma­tions such as trusts, for ex­am­ple, have nev­er and still do not form part of Guyana’s le­gal and/or com­mer­cial ar­chi­tec­ture.

“It is not sur­pris­ing there­fore, that trusts make up less than four per cent of le­gal per­sons or arrange­ments in Guyana,” he said, telling the meet­ing that cur­rent­ly, work is on­go­ing on a mod­ern trust leg­is­la­tion which will be en­act­ed short­ly.

“It would be the first of its kind in Guyana. An­oth­er unique is­sue in Guyana is the use of co-op­er­a­tives as a form of le­gal arrange­ments. These are le­gal en­ti­ties, cre­at­ed by statute, en­act­ed over six decades ago with a view of as­sist­ing small peas­ant farm­ers to en­gage in com­mu­nal agri­cul­tur­al pur­suits.

“The main as­sets of these or­gan­i­sa­tions con­sist of State lands which these co-ops hold by leas­es. The statu­to­ry reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work re­quires these en­ti­ties to com­ply with the gov­ern­ing leg­is­la­tion and to file an­nu­al re­turns.

“Ex­pect­ed­ly, most of them are in de­fault. In our view, they pose no AML/CFT risk what­so­ev­er, but they fell to be con­sid­ered for the as­sess­ment,” he added. —(CMC)