Trinidad & Tobago leave the FATF 'grey list'

Chris Hamblin

27 February 2020

In January 2015, Trinidad and Tobago was the first member of the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF) to undergo the FATF 4th Round Mutual Evaluation peer review process and it failed miserably, with the Government taking no steps to inform the public of this assessment. The resulting Mutual Evaluation Report, published in June 2016, outlined numerous deficiencies and as a result Trinidad and Tobago were placed on the FATF’s 'grey list' in November 2017 and subject to active monitoring by the standard-setter.

The Attorney General (as part of the Government of Premier Keith Rowley) struggled to improve plant, machinery, processes, people and laws and beef up the criminal justice system in general. The Government enacted 23 pieces of legislation to counter money laundering and terrorist finance. Over the past four years, the UNC Opposition did not support and caused unnecessary delays with the progression of these pieces of legislation.

In its attempts to leave the list, Trinidad and Tobago did the following.

Expanded measures for civil forfeiture and confiscation by legislating to create Unexplained Wealth Orders - a British invention.
Established specialist financial prosecutorial and investigative units in the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions and the police.
Bumped up the budget of the financial intelligence unit by 69%.
"Improved the judicial complement of the judiciary" by 70%, whatever that means.
Set up a Beneficial Ownership information register for all companies and non-profit organisations in the Registrar General’s Department and increased its headcount threefold.
Began to monitor transactions continually for signs of terrorist finance, obtaining 116 court orders to date.

The FATF liked these reforms and appreciated the Attorney General’s participation at three annual FATF 'plenary' meetings and many bi-annual meetings of the regional Caribbean FATF, as well as periodic face-to-face meetings with the FATF itself in which he presented it with progress reports.