TT must amend law

THIS country must put in place more aggressive legislation to combat the financing of terrorist organisations by September or face some penalty by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), warned Susan Francois, director of the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) of the Ministry of Finance.

Speaking at a Joint Select Committee meeting in the Parliament last week, Francois said the Task Force, which is a Paris-based organisation, is responsible for setting standards for the prevention of money-laundering and terrorist financing.

A review of TT’s anti-terrorist legislation in 2015, she said, revealed that current legislation was not sufficiently robust to tackle these issues. She added that both government and the opposition must reach some agreement on proposed amendments to the anti-terrorism bill by September, before the Task Force convenes, or face some financial sanctioning.

“The FATF found that our Anti-Terrorism Act, while it criminalised the terrorism-financing offence, still had several deficiencies or omissions (of things) required by its standards, one of which was in relation to the implementation of financial sanctions on terrorists and persons who have been convicted of terrorist-related offences.

The sanction provisions were not proportionate or not sufficient.” Failing to address these deficiencies within a particular time frame, she said, meant there is a possibility of being sanctioned by the FATF. Those sanctions could take many forms. “If, for example we get a bad report from the FATF, when our financial institutions conduct business outside of TT with other financial institutions, those bodies may apply certain restrictive measures to restrict transactions coming into them from this country. So, we may face certain difficulties in conducting out international transactions,” Francois said.