GRENADA-Parliament gives green light to recommendations in 2022 CFATF report.

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Economic Development, Planning and Cooperative Minister, Lennox Andrews
Economic Development, Planning and Cooperative Minister, Lennox Andrews

ST. GEORGE’S, Grenada, CMC – Parliament has approved four pieces of legislation recommended for Grenada to enact following the 2022 Fourth Round Mutual Evaluation Report of the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF).

The report summarises the Anti-Money Laundering/ Countering Terrorist Financing (AML/CTF) measures put in place following a site visit in 2021. It analyses the level of compliance with the FATF 40 Recommendations and the effectiveness of Grenada’s AML/CFT system and provides recommendations on how the system could be strengthened.

The four pieces of legislation approved by legislators are the Customs (Amendment) Bill, 2024; the Friendly Societies (Amendment) Bill, 2024; the Cooperative Societies (Amendment) Bill, 2024; and the Exchange Control (Amendment) Bill, 2024.

The Customs (Amendment) Bill seeks to amend the Customs Act of 2015 to enhance the integrated legislative framework to combat money laundering and terrorism financing in conjunction with the Financial Intelligence Unit and the Anti-Money Laundering and Combating Terrorism Financing Commission.

Economic Development, Planning, and Cooperative Minister Lennox Andrews, who piloted the bill, said that the Amendment mandates the Comptroller of Customs file a Suspicious Activity Report when a person imports or attempts to import goods in a manner that is different from the declaration or intended to deceive the customs officer in contravention of the law.

“The Suspicious Activity Report would be filed with the Financial Intelligence Unit, which receives all Suspicious Activity Reports filed under all legislation,” Andrews said, adding that the legislation also mandates that the Comptroller of Customs maintain records of transactions for a minimum of five years.

The Amendment also requires the Comptroller of Customs to file a Suspicious Activity Report where a person makes a false declaration and that it would be filed with the Financial Intelligence Unit, which receives all Suspicious Activity Reports filed under all legislation.

The Friendly Societies (Amendment) Bill, 2024, and the Cooperative Societies (Amendment) Bill provide for public scrutiny and examination of the names of all members of these entities.

“Grenada should make public the information on the creation of friendly societies, building societies, cooperatives and legal arrangements,” the mutual evaluation report recommended.

The Exchange Control (Amendment) Bill 2024 seeks to enhance the integrated legislative framework to combat money laundering and terrorism financing by creating an obligation to retain records of transactions conducted under that legislation.

“The Permanent Secretary or the competent authority, as the case may be, shall retain each record obtained or created for this Act for a minimum period of five years from the date the record is obtained or created.

“Where the Permanent Secretary or the competent authority retains a record electronically, the Permanent Secretary or the competent authority, as the case may be, shall retain the record in an electronically readable format,” the Amendment recommends.

The report, published in July 2022, also recommended that Grenada address the technical compliance deficiencies in recommendations 24 and 25 and develop widely known mechanisms to facilitate the verification of Beneficial ownership information.

Recommendation 24 suggests that “Designated non-financial businesses and professions should be subject to regulatory and supervisory measures.” At the same time, Recommendation 25 recommends that the competent authorities should establish guidelines and provide feedback that will assist financial institutions and designated non-financial businesses and professions in applying national measures to combat money laundering and terrorist financing and, in particular, in detecting and reporting suspicious transactions.

The report further called on the government to identify, assess, and understand the vulnerabilities and the extent to which legal persons created in the country can be or are misused for money laundering and terrorism financing.

“Grenada should implement, based on identified vulnerabilities, mitigating measures to prevent the misuse of legal persons and legal arrangements for ML/TF purposes,” the report noted.

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