Georgetown : Guyana will know its fate on Thursday, June 26, when the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is expected to release a public statement on the outcome of its consideration of Guyana. The international body is currently holding its third plenary and working group meeting in Paris, France.
Secretary to the Cabinet, Dr. Roger Luncheon today informed that Guyana is being represented by Presidential Advisor on Governance, Gail Teixeira (who is part of the delegation of regional body).
Teixeira was given the opportunity to address the plenary on Monday, where she outlined and sensitised the gathering of Guyana’s unique situation, which the Government is hoping will be taken into consideration and result in a positive outcome.
“In a nutshell, the gist of her presentation was that unlike other situations affecting other jurisdictions brought before FATF, this one had nothing to do with the Government and intransigence of Government,” the HPS said.
The plenary was informed of the efforts of stakeholders (locally, regionally and internationally) to ensure the timely passage and enactment of a CFATF-FATF compliant anti-money laundering legislation.
These stakeholders, the HPS lamented had to confront the inflexibility of the parliamentary Opposition.
He said that it was not the government that was being tried at the FATF plenary, it is a unique situation and questioned what a government can do when the level of frustration has been so consistently maintained by an obdurate parliamentary Opposition on the basis of a one-seat majority.
“I have no doubt that Guyana’s unique situation indeed presented some amount of need for FATF to think and operate outside of the box,” the HPS said.
He added that the feedback received from Teixeira is that the work of the Government, the stakeholders and the regional CFATF organisation would not go down in vain. There are expectations that FATF’s pronouncements would recognise the uniqueness of the Guyana situation.
The Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism Bill came as a result of recommendations from the CFATF. The country was given several deadlines to pass this important legislation, all of which were missed. As a result, the country has been regionally blacklisted.
“Our efforts to get CFATF compliant legislation on the books would not be daunted by reversals along the way; we just have to keep on struggling… for us to imagine a Guyana subjected to blacklisting for a failure to enact CFATF compliant legislation is virtually intolerable, and not consistent with our fighting spirits,” Dr. Luncheon said.
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