Under pressure from foreign financial authorities, the Barrow administration today tabled yet another slew of bills in the House of Representatives, which Prime Minister Dean Barrow said are intended to make Belize fully compliant with the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF).
Barrow said that the bills are part and parcel of efforts to put in place legislative architecture to become fully compliant with CFATF, which has Belize on a gray list. He said that while the number of requirements, in his view, “is hypocritical, to say the least; these people have such power over our financial sector and can invoke the collapse of the sector.”
He said that Belize has no choice but to comply. According to Barrow, while some aspects of the bills are good, there are other provisions that Belize would not have implemented, “if left to our own devices.”
He introduced an amendment to the Companies Act, which includes provisions for mandatory registration of beneficial owners of registered companies; an amendment to the Domestic Banks and Financial Institutions Act to prohibit licensing of shell banks; an amendment to the Financial Intelligence Union (FIU) Act, to ensure compliance with international standards on operational independence; amendments to the Money Laundering and Terrorism Prevention Act and a mutual legal assistance bill, which makes provisions for evidence sharing.
In commenting on the matter last November, Barrow told the press: “There is an international movement driven by the big countries, driven particularly by the United States, to come down on small countries such as Belize that have offshore financial sectors, and I absolutely think that to be unfair. For a long time we’ve been hearing about diversification, all sorts of preferences have been eroded.
“We tried to diversify by way of the offshore financial services sector, and then this is what we are met with, but so far, less sympathy by way of what’s going on with the CFATF and the FATF than the EU position, but I stress again – because, as you know, everything is transmitted instantaneously, that while I complain and while I am upset, we have to comply. They have the power; there is no choice. I can think that some of what they ask us to do is unfair; I can lament that fact that practitioners here that are making a living in the sector will be affected, but ultimately, because they can force the collapse of our whole commercial banking system, there is no hope for [us not] to comply and we will comply,” Barrow said.