Tackling money laundering

The plan by the Central Bank to review its anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing mechanisms to make it more difficult for money launderers and terrorism financiers to do business in this country should not be taken to mean that existing measures have not been effective. Part of the reason for the added thrust has been that money launderers and those who finance terrorism, in many cases the same people, have employed advancements in technology to keep ahead of official initiatives.

The Central Bank has, understandably, appreciated the need to remain alert to new developments. In turn, several branches of some of the country’s financial institutions may not have been as vigilant as existing regulations demanded. But even where this existed strategies have been developed by money launderers to circumvent them. We believe the need to return to a point made in earlier Editorials that the Inland Revenue Department should be upgraded, both in manpower and technology, to position it to be able to conduct investigations into individuals whose lifestyles are not reflected in their declared incomes. And, additionally, the growing number of companies whose expansion and investments are at odds with the volume of business generated.  

While Trinidad and Tobago does not allow for offshore banking, for example, a money laundering environment, nonetheless, has been facilitated by the illegal drug trade through which large sums of money change hands each year. The lucrative drug trade is said to have stimulated a parallel drug economy in this country, as it has, say, in the United States of America, Jamaica, the United Kingdom, and to a lesser extent Barbados, through which countless numbers of jobs and “businesses” have been created or expanded. Admittedly, this country has not officially allowed itself to be a tax haven for international capital and in this manner, however unintentionally, encouraged the flight of foreign capital to within its boundaries, which would have brought it into conflict with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development as some of the other Caribbean countries have done.

Nevertheless, the illegal drug trade has seen tens of millions of dollars being reaped. Presumably, this is one of the Central Bank’s areas of concern when it speaks of financiers of terrorism, bearing in mind that the originating country of the bulk of TT’s cocaine trans-shipment trade is Colombia. On the plus side for Trinidad and Tobago, however, has been the statement by Central Bank senior examiner, Adrian Saunders, that while this country was not as advanced as other countries in tackling the issues of money laundering and terrorism financing it had done well to prevent the money launderers and terrorism financiers from setting up shop here.