Moonilal: Any other embassy accounts closed?

Oropouche West MP Dr Roodal Moonilal is calling on Finance Minister Colm Imbert to say whether more of TT’s embassies and missions have had their bank accounts closed due to running afoul of money laundering laws.

He made the statement following the disclosure by the PM in Parliament on Friday that the impending closure of a bank account for the TT Embassy in Brussels, Belgium is not due to TT being on the EU blacklist. Moonilal called on the government to disclose whether TT’s embassies in Ottawa, Canada, and New York in the US have run afoul of money laundering laws in the respective jurisdictions.

Moonilal made the call during the UNC’s Sunday media conference at the Office of the Opposition Leader, Port of Spain.

“The issue started in Panama in 2018, and has now spread to Europe and North America. There are serious concerns, and I want to call on Finance Minister Colm Imbert to indicate to the population why have embassies’ accounts throughout the world been subjected to closure, to threats of closure. Why is the Deutsche Bank, in particular, writing to embassies concerning matters of money laundering?

“The Prime Minister admitted on Friday that the closure or attempted closure of the bank accounts in Brussels has to do with European Union Laws and money laundering. Why have we found ourselves in this position? And we can map it across the world, Panama, New York, Brussels, that we know of so far. There may be issues in other countries where we operate missions, we don’t know. What is happening is that the international community is clamping down on TT, and the transactions of the government abroad are now snowballing due to their failure to comply with FACTA and global finance requirements.”