Trini ISIL fighters are terrorists

She said for them to leave this country and go abroad with the intention to fight with ISIL means they would have had to be radicalised to a strain of violent Islam extremism.

She said followers of ISIL are not Muslims but followers of that violent strain of Islam and if Trinidadians and Tobagonians are being radicalised to that kind of violence then the country should be concerned because ISIL’s strategy is not just to deal with the near enemy but for quite some time now it has adopted the Al-Qaeda strategy of the far enemy, encouraging those so inclined that if they cannot join them in Syria, they can commit certain acts in support of its ideology wherever they are. She said people would have been seeing the videos of such attacks in the media.

Francois said ISIL has expanded and its global reach is not just Iraq and Syria but throughout the world including anyone it can convince to support it.

Francois was one of the panelists at a workshop on the Fourth Round Mutual Evaluation Report, an update on the proposed changes to the country’s AML/ CFT framework and a look at the emerging threat of terrorist activity, held at the Westmoorings office of the TT Chamber of Industry and Commerce.

EXTREMISM IS AN IDEOLOGY Speaking on the impact of terrorism and terrorist activities in TT and the country’s remedies, she said the authorities have to counter that by presenting a different alternative, pointing out that this country has mainstream Muslims who have been living as a society and have been included in the society and they can be presented as an alternative to the violent extremism of ISIL.

She said these mainstream Muslims must be included in a counter message because law enforcement cannot monitor every person who returns from the ISIL frontline, which she estimated at about 150 people. She said the intention must be to prevent the radicalisation of people in TT because the country does not have the resources to monitor all those people who have returned. She said the Islamic extremism preached by ISIL is an ideology and one cannot defeat an ideology with a gun but one needs an ideology to replace it.

In an interview with Newsday, she said this country has achieved many successes in complying with the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force. She said most of the necessary legislation has been passed although there are a few outstanding matters, such as laws to regulate non-profit organisations, money value transfer services and legislation to regulate credit unions. However, she said the country has had moderate to low ratings in respect of showing how effectively it is implementing its legislation but within the last year has made significant strides to show that it has substantially progressed in making the AML/CFT laws more effective in TT.

DANGER IN NON-COMPLIANCE One of the recurring issues was the lack of prosecutions under the legislation, but while she admitted “we are not there yet,” Francois said that law enforcement had charged 16 people with offences for such crimes as drug trafficking, money laundering and fraud and these charges were important to show that the country is committed to making its AML/CFT system strong. During the panel discussion, Belinda James, head of compliance at RBC, Caribbean Banking, said the biggest danger in this country’s failure to fully comply with the AML/CFT regulations is the threat of the loss of its corresponding banking relationships which would have the effect of shutting local banks out of the US clearing system.

She said this would have implications for people who are exporting and would need to have access to the US clearing facility for payments.

She added that there has been increased scrutiny of the country by its corresponding banking partners and they are looking more closely at transactions, asking more questions and are generally concerned about the rising risk within the country. She said if TT moves to a position similar to some of its Caricom neighbours whose correspondent banking partners are actually shutting down relationships, this country could suffer a significant shift.

However, she said the country was nowhere close to that situation and was lucky to have good relationships with its correspondent banks and was keeping the communication lines open. “We are open to feedback, we are addressing concerns with certain clients where necessary, we are responding to questions.” She said there was sometimes resistance from the public to some of the questions asked by financial institutions during their “know your customer” exercises.

However, James said if the bank is asked about a particular transaction by its correspondent bank it has to go to the client for the information, adding that it wasn’t that the bank was accusing the client of any wrongdoing but it was an attempt to pacify or satisfy the correspondent bank’s request for additional information. She said once local banks are able to convince their corresponding banks that they are doing what they need to do to manage risk, the local financial system should be all right.