De­spite a unan­i­mous vote in Par­lia­ment for the Civ­il As­set Re­cov­ery and Man­age­ment and Un­ex­plained Wealth Bill, 2019, on Mon­day night, the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion dis­agreed over the ma­jor amend­ments made to the bill.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said they en­sured "ap­pro­pri­ate safe­guards were in­sert­ed in the bill to en­sure the prop­er­ty of all cit­i­zens was not at risk of be­ing tak­en by the State."

The UNC brought 63 amend­ments for the de­bate on Mon­day and said eight were even­tu­al­ly made to the bill.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she, "con­vinced the Gov­ern­ment to re­move the claus­es through­out the bill that al­lowed any po­lice of­fi­cer and any cus­toms of­fi­cer to com­mence pro­ceed­ings un­der the bill and to re­place this with the Comp­trol­ler of Cus­toms and Ex­cise and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice or any of­fi­cer above the rank of in­spec­tor."

These changes most sig­nif­i­cant­ly af­fect­ed clause 31 and 58 of the bill, she said.

Clause 31 ini­tial­ly stat­ed, "The bill would em­pow­er a po­lice of­fi­cer, cus­toms of­fi­cer or the Chair­man of the Board of In­land Rev­enue to for­ward an in­ves­tiga­tive re­port to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (“DPP”), where he has rea­son­able grounds to sus­pect that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­volves re­cov­er­able prop­er­ty."

Clause 58 mean­while orig­i­nal­ly read, "Em­pow­ers the Chair­man of the Board of In­land Rev­enue, a Cus­toms and Ex­cise of­fi­cer or a po­lice of­fi­cer at­tached to the fi­nan­cial in­ves­ti­ga­tions unit of the Po­lice Ser­vice to ap­ply to the High Court for a Pre­lim­i­nary Un­ex­plained Wealth Or­der, where there is a rea­son­able sus­pi­cion that the to­tal wealth of the re­spon­dent ex­ceeds the val­ue of his law­ful­ly ob­tained wealth and that the prop­er­ty is owned by the re­spon­dent or is un­der his ef­fec­tive con­trol."

In her state­ment, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, "This en­sured that the fears of cit­i­zens that they will be tar­get­ed by low­er-rank­ing of­fi­cers who abuse the pow­ers con­ferred by the leg­is­la­tion was elim­i­nat­ed."

How­ev­er, the Gov­ern­ment claimed many of the changes claimed by the Op­po­si­tion were pro­posed by Gov­ern­ment.

Speak­ing on CNC 3's the Morn­ing Brew, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs Fitzger­ald Hinds said the UNC's state­ment was pure­ly to save face.

"There were sev­en amend­ments to the bill. The sub­stan­tial amend­ments that went in­to clause 31, which went in­to the pro­ce­dure for civ­il for­fei­ture and clause 58, that has to do with the un­ex­plained wealth pro­ce­dure, they came from the Gov­ern­ment. Noth­ing sig­nif­i­cant, noth­ing sub­stan­tial, noth­ing of any meat came from the UNC," Hinds said.

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young echoed that sen­ti­ment in a state­ment yes­ter­day.

"The ma­jor­i­ty of amend­ments to the bill, and cer­tain­ly the sub­stan­tial ones that were agreed to, were the prod­uct of the Gov­ern­ment’s work over the week­end," Young said.

Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert al­so took to so­cial me­dia to com­ment on the bill.

"Gov­ern­ment made sev­en amend­ments to pro­vide fur­ther safe­guards for in­no­cent cit­i­zens and agreed to five amend­ments pro­posed by the Op­po­si­tion. Land­mark leg­is­la­tion that was long over­due."