NASSAU, Bahamas, CMC – The Bahamas government says it is examining new initiatives as it seeks to honor obligations made to the European Union for the country to be considered for removal from the EU’s list of non-cooperative jurisdictions in October.
“Being on the EU non-cooperative list has to do with the economic substance regime of The Bahamas. And there were three reasons why we were on the non-cooperative list,” said Attorney General Ryan Pinder.
“The first one would be the legislation and updating the legislation to make sure we were complying with international best practices. The second component was the reporting portal was ineffective. That was the one that was put in place through the Department of Inland Revenue.
“And the third component was we needed to show that we were enforcing the laws, doing onsite inspections, seeing if everybody was complying, who should be complying,” Pinder told reporters.
The EU is set to reevaluate this country’s substance reporting regime to ensure it is in line with international best practices, and Pinder said hopefully that by next month, the government should have all of the deficiencies outlined by the EU rectified.
“Concerning all of that, you would know we passed the Commercial Entities (Substance Requirements) Act, CESRA, in the final session, and that’s been signed, and then there’ll be an appointed day notice for September, which is the end of the reporting period.
“We have also engaged BDO (BDO Global), who did the BOSS [beneficial ownership secure search] reporting system for beneficial ownership, to build a purpose-built economic substance reporting portal. The industry has already demoed that.”
The Attorney General said training sessions for that portal will begin this week, with the full launch of the portal during the first week of September.
He told reporters that the Ministry of Finance had done onsite inspections to ensure financial institutions and others that deal with economic substance reporting fully comply with the requisite financial services bills required by the EU.
Pinder said during those inspections. They found some firms to need to be more compliant. “They’ve issued fines and asked for remediation on those [non-compliant] aspects.
“So those onsite inspections are underway, and they have about 35 more slated to start in September. We’re meeting all the expectations that were laid out for us.”
Pinder said the EU visit to reassess this country’s compliance will likely come in October.
and then 