Caribbean L 52 ife, Oct. 11-17, 2019 BQ
CARIBBEAN ROUNDUP
Trinidad
Attorney General Faris-al-Rawi said
he has written to the European Union
(EU) seeking to remove Trinidad and
Tobago from its blacklist of countries it
deems to be tax havens.
Al Rawi said Trinidad
and Tobago would
be taking the matter
to Brussels, where
many of the EU institutions
are headquartered.
He expressed confidence that in the
short run as the country comes to the
end of that process that Trinidad and
Tobago, from an FATF (Financial Action
Task Force) position, “will no longer be
on the list because of the amount of
work we have done. We have done a significant
amount of work in this area.”
Al-Rawi explained that the blacklisting
by the EU was a combination of
two events. Firstly it was influenced by
Trinidad and Tobago’s position in relation
to the Global Forum on Transparency
and Exchange of Information for
Tax Purposes, with which Trinidad and
Tobago was not compliant.
He said this was due to the fact
that the former Kamla Persad-Bissessar
administration committed the country
to become Global Forum compliant in
2011 but did not do the work required
to achieve this.
The attorney general said the second
element of the EU blacklisting was
based on the use of the FATF listing to
treat T&T and countries like the British
Virgin Islands negatively.
He said that good standing with
FATF was all tied to the government’s
(legislative) agenda, which included
anti-terrorist reform, criminal justice
reform, prosecutions, beneficial ownership
and civil forfeiture.
“All these things have been met
with approval by the FATF, because it
matched the concerns that they (the
FATF) had also raised,” Al-Rawi said.
— Compiled by Azad Ali
Continued from Page 4
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