Friend­ly So­ci­eties will “es­cape” Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed leg­is­la­tion to reg­u­late Non-Prof­it Or­gan­i­sa­tions (NPOs) which was fur­ther ad­just­ed yes­ter­day to reg­u­late dif­fer­ent sizes of sim­i­lar or­gan­i­sa­tions in dif­fer­ent ways.

“It’s dif­fer­ent sizes to fit dif­fer­ent (NPO) peo­ple,” At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi said in fi­nal (Com­mit­tee) stage dis­cus­sions on the bill in the Sen­ate on Thurs­day.

Al-Rawi pro­posed a num­ber of amend­ments to the bill. Con­cern had been ex­pressed about the bill by var­i­ous NPOs and non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions in days lead­ing up to Tues­day’s start of the de­bate in the Sen­ate.

The bill which re­quired a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty vote for pas­sage was en route to be­ing passed last night, with 23 of its 29 claus­es ap­proved by 7.10 pm - de­spite Op­po­si­tion ob­jec­tions.

Al-Rawi said since de­bate of the bill be­gan, he had met var­i­ous NPOs and they had agreed on nu­mer­i­cal and oth­er changes to the bill, in­clud­ing ad­dress­ing Friend­ly So­ci­eties.

He said Friend­ly So­ci­ety rep­re­sen­ta­tives had point­ed out that such or­gan­i­sa­tions are catered for in oth­er leg­is­la­tion.

Al-Rawi, there­fore, amend­ed the bill to ex­clude that cat­e­go­ry.

An­oth­er amend­ment changed the pro­posed scruti­ny of NPOs. Al-Rawi said those with gross rev­enue un­der $500,000 would not be sub­ject to reg­u­la­tions as those with high­er rev­enue would be. Those with gross rev­enue of $500,000 and over will be sub­ject to Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit scruti­ny.

Those with gross rev­enue of $500,000 to $10 mil­lion would not re­quire manda­to­ry sub­mis­sion of the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ment. But those with gross rev­enue over $10m must sub­mit such state­ments an­nu­al­ly.

Al-Rawi said “com­pan­ion “ leg­is­la­tion to the NPO bill which will be pre­sent­ed lat­er on, deals with big­ger is­sues in the sec­tor. He al­so said the Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force reg­u­la­tions (FATF) - which re­quire NPOs to be reg­u­lat­ed - al­so call for cred­it unions and co-op­er­a­tives to be reg­u­lat­ed. He said they will be sub­ject­ed to as­pects of reg­u­la­to­ry ac­tion ahead and the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter is dis­cussing a pol­i­cy pa­per on the is­sue with the sec­tor.

Com­mit­tee chair­man Nigel de Fre­itas had to sus­pend Com­mit­tee de­lib­er­a­tions for 15 min­utes fol­low­ing clash­es be­tween Al-Rawi and the Op­po­si­tion.

Dur­ing the sus­pen­sion, Al-Rawi told re­porters pro­posed leg­is­la­tion - re­quir­ing three- fifth’s ma­jor­i­ty vote for pas­sage - is in the works, re­gard­ing no bail for peo­ple vi­o­lat­ing re­strain­ing or­ders. A call for this was made yes­ter­day by Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ties Com­mis­sion chair­per­son Lynette See­baran-Suite.

Next Mon­day, the Sen­ate will de­bate the “Ex­plain Your Wealth “bill which was passed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on April 8.