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Monday, February 24, 2025

More amendments coming to Global Forum Bill—AG

by

158 days ago
20240919

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

More amend­ments will be brought to the Par­lia­ment af­ter the re­cent pas­sage of the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Glob­al Fo­rum) Bill, which tight­ens as­pects of de­c­la­ra­tions that com­pa­nies, trusts and non-prof­it en­ti­ties have to make to the Gov­ern­ment.

This was sig­nalled by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, who said the bill in­creas­es the re­quire­ments of how com­pa­nies, trusts and NPOs ac­count over their share­hold­ers and oth­er de­tails.

“The ‘back-of-the-en­ve­lope’ ap­proach to cor­po­rate ad­min­is­tra­tion must end,” Ar­mour said in Tues­day’s Sen­ate de­bate on the bill.

The bill is de­signed to get T&T off the Eu­ro­pean Union’s black­list and the Glob­al Fo­rum’s non-com­pli­ant list on tax trans­paren­cy and in­for­ma­tion ex­change mat­ters. It was passed in the Low­er House last Fri­day and the Sen­ate on Tues­day.

On Op­po­si­tion con­cerns about “loop­holes” in the bill, Ar­mour said it was not so much about loop­holes but the scope for re­fine­ment, as the evolv­ing na­ture of fi­nan­cial crimes de­mand­ed that T&T re­main adap­tive and for­ward-think­ing.

On the bill’s pro­vi­sions on com­pa­nies, Ar­mour said the ex­er­cise with the bill served to high­light that the old ap­proach of us­ing “the back of an en­ve­lope” for cor­po­rate ad­min­is­tra­tion must end.

He not­ed the Glob­al Fo­rum and Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force frowned on dead cor­po­rate en­ti­ties repos­ing in Reg­istries and re­mov­ing in­ac­tive com­pa­nies would go a long way to­ward show­ing T&T’s bid to be com­pli­ant with both en­ti­ties. Ar­mour not­ed the bill em­pow­ered the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al to strike delin­quent com­pa­nies off the Com­pa­nies Reg­is­ter. This is be­ing done with 63,000 com­pa­nies.

Ly­der: Govt run­ning like head­less chick­en to com­ply with EU

How­ev­er, Ly­der asked, “Why T&T is still one of the dirty dozens on the EU’s black­list? Gov­ern­ment had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to deal with it since 2017, but on­ly in the last 12 months, we see them run, skip and jump­ing like a head­less chick­en, bring­ing a slew of leg­is­la­tion be­cause the pres­sure’s on them now.”

He said the Op­po­si­tion was not giv­en time to prop­er­ly re­view the im­pli­ca­tions of the bill, which makes sweep­ing changes.

“Here we are with this sweep­ing set of changes yet we can­not even en­act leg­is­la­tion al­ready passed on cer­tain as­pects,” he said.

Ly­der cit­ed an OECD re­port pub­lished Mon­day on the 2024 Peer Re­view on tax ex­change mat­ters, which he said gave “damn­ing” re­views of T&T’s tax in­for­ma­tion ex­change frame­work di­rect­ly to all the claus­es in the bill.

He ob­ject­ed to any clause hav­ing the Fi­nance Min­is­ter in the bill.

He said, “We don’t trust this Gov­ern­ment. We saw Derek Chin’s in­for­ma­tion in the pa­pers. Chi­nese Laun­dry ‘dirty laun­dry’ was in pa­pers.

“You want us to trust the Min­is­ter? We can­not even ac­count for $2.6 bil­lion to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al.”


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