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Dear Delegates,
The Peoples Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) welcomes you to the Co-operative
Republic of Guyana. We hope that your deliberations will be successful and we
encourage you to enjoy our countrys warm hospitality.
As the Parliamentary Opposition, we feel compelled to draw to your attention that
the Government of Guyana continues to lag behind in implementing several
outstanding recommendations, which our nation is obliged to do as part of its
international financial obligations. As a result of this incompetence and neglect,
our financial and banking sectors continue to be visited with a repertoire of
sanctions and hardships, which continue to make it very difficult for persons
conducting certain categories of financial transactions in the country. This is the
reality despite the Attorney Generals repeated public misrepresentation that
Guyana has discharged all the requisite obligations under the regional AML/CFT
regime.
The truth is that it is under the Peoples Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C)
Administration that anti-money laundering and countering the financing of
terrorism laws were introduced in Guyana, firstly in 2001, and then again in 2009,
with the enactment of our current Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the
Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) Act.
It is common knowledge, fresh in the memory of most, that during the Tenth
Parliament of Guyana, the APNU/AFC (now the Government), used their one seat
majority in the National Assembly to vote down two AML/CFT Amendment Bills,
one in 2012, and one in 2014, which were intended to incorporate into the principal
Act, a host of recommendations of CFATF. They did so after hijacking these Bills
and keeping them in a Special Select Committee, unnecessarily, for several
months, holding the then Government to ransom by demanding a multiplicity of
political concessions. In the end, they still voted down the Bills, causing Guyana to
be subjected to a regime of sanctions and to be reviewed by the Financial Action
Task Force (FATF) as recommended by CFATF.
All that this Government has done over the past two years, was to simply enact the
very two Bills, which they voted down while they were in the Opposition and
which exposed our financial sector to sanctions as well as the loss of invaluable
business relations in several countries across the globe, especially, with
international corresponding banks. Significantly, they have abysmally failed to
have these sanctions removed and restore the invaluable relationships lost.
In the meanwhile, they are guilty of a number of transgressions, which have
exposed Guyanas financial sector and indeed, the entire nation, to greater
international harm, for example: