The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

The Opposition's spokesman yesterday demanded that the Government eliminate the "bottleneck of bureaucracy" for the private sector, as he warned that The Bahamas is “not the only game in town”.

Chester Cooper, also the Progressive Liberal Party's (PLP) deputy leader, told the House of Assembly during the debate on reforms to the Register of Beneficial Ownership Act that there was no need for the National Economic Council (NEC) - meaning Cabinet or a Cabinet sub-committee - to approve regulated entities.

"I don’t understand for the life of me why this would be the case, given that there are competent regulators in our country. We must look to streamline this. We must look to ensure perhaps that the NEC is meeting more regularly to ensure that these regulated entities are not stuck in the bottleneck of bureaucracy," he blasted.

Pointing out that the Bahamas is “not the only game in town” in financial services, he encouraged the Government to get its “inefficiencies” out of the way of doing business. Mr Cooper added: “We must pivot with super-tech for automating approvals. We must pivot with fintech to compete globally.

"We should not give any other jurisdiction an edge over us. When we are debating these Bills, when we debated them two years ago, I stressed that.... we must ensure that we are compliant but not make ourselves less competitive than Cayman or the BVI (British Virgin Islands.

"The elephant in the room today is the issue of possible hacks. That’s the elephant in the room. There was already at least one hack of the Bahamas Registrar General’s system, not this one, but another one, and quite frankly it sent chills down my spine," Mr Cooper continued.

"The fact that it happened, and the fact that we weren’t told about it for some six months, that concerned me. We were told that there was going to be an investigation into that hack, but we have not been told the results of that investigation.”

“Thankfully the database of beneficial owners itself was not hacked, and as I have mentioned before an electronic database of beneficial owners of all entities in The Bahamas is a powerful one and it goes to the privacy we offer."

Reece Chipman, the Centreville MP, said in his contribution: "You go to the Registrar General’s office and there are missing documents. I wouldn’t speak about the information for the missing companies. The problem is many of these companies that have been moved off of the register, in many cases, were created to steal the very birthright of Bahamian people.

"Companies accused of quieting acres of land now cannot be found in our Registrar, yet the so-called current owners of such land are paying documentary title. We have a lot to do to get our country back. There are some wrongs that need to be corrected, but there is also some good and some freedoms that need to be exonerated.

"So when we talk about maintaining a register of beneficial owners, the world is watching and I support the amendment."