The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas is “pressing” to be removed by October 2020 from a list of countries with identified weaknesses in their anti-financial crime defences, the attorney general said yesterday.

Carl Bethel QC, in is contribution to the 2020-2021 Budget debate, told the Senate that the Government was pushing the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to complete its “site visit” in time to ratify The Bahamas’ escape from its “enhanced monitoring” list at its October meeting.

The FATF, which is the global standard-setter in the fight against anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing, agreed earlier this year that The Bahamas had made sufficient progress to warrant beginning the “exit process” from the initiative. This involves an FATF team making an “on-the-ground” visit to this nation to ensure it has implemented all the promised reforms.

However, the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated global lockdown inevitably delayed the “site visit”, which had originally been scheduled for April in hopes that The Bahamas would be removed at the FATF’s June meeting. The virus, though, dashed that expectation.

Mr Bethel yesterday said the FATF agreed at its plenary to schedule The Bahamas ‘site visit’ as soon as Europe’s borders open for international travel. “We are pressing for the FATF to agree to hold the on-site in time for the FATF to consider whether or not to de-list The Bahamas at its October 2020 plenary,” he added.

“As you all know, The Bahamas was put into the FATF ‘grey’ list of countries with strategic deficiencies in their anti-money laundering/counter financing of terrorism framework in June 2017. Scarcely two weeks after we came to office we were informed that [it was going to happen], and that was confirmed the next month in June.

“Due to an adverse mutual evaluation by the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF), which was completed in 2015, we knew what the problems were, but the government was rather distracted by a whole lot of other things, so not as much was done as was needed to be done.”

Mr Bethel said he had attended the FATF’s June meeting via Zoom, adding that the body’s international co-operation review group agreed to reschedule the delayed onsite visit as soon as borders opened to international travel.

“The international co-operation review group agreed to amend their usual rule for full face-to-face meetings, and a part of the onsite will be done by virtual means. The size of the review teams will be cut down. These were all agreed at the plenary,” he added.

Mr Bethel reiterated that escaping the FATF list is vital if The Bahamas is to be removed from the European Union’s (EU) separate “blacklist” of countries that allegedly have deficiencies in their anti-financial crime defences.

The EU already made clear that its listing of The Bahamas has been heavily influenced by this nation’s inclusion on the FATF’s enhanced scrutiny initiative, and the attorney general added: “Regretfully, based on the FATF ‘grey’ list, which but for COVID-19 I think we would have been off of in April or early June, the EU placed us on their own blacklist based on the fact that we are still on the FATF ‘grey’ list.

“Dialogue at the highest levels is being conducted with the EU through the ministry of foreign affairs and The Bahamas’ mission in Brussells, Belgium. There are also developing contacts through the attorney general’s office and European Commission officials, and we hope to have a familiarisation visit as soon as travel to and from the EU is permissible. Certainly, nothing can be done on our part until our own borders are fully open, hopefully in July.”