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Saint Lucia steps up legislation to deal with money laundering

Contact:  Adhara King

Wednesday, September 21, 2011 – The Ministry of Justice and the Attorney General's Chambers are working vigorously to ensure the implementation of international standards on money laundering and terrorism financing.

Attorney General Lorenzo Rudolph Francis says Saint Lucia is making strides to comply with policies set forth by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

The FATF is an inter-governmental organization established by the G7 summit of 1989 in Paris.  In 1990, the FATF produced 40 recommendations to combat the misuse of financial systems by persons laundering drug money.

In 1996, the recommendations were revised to reflect the evolving money laundering typologies, Francis says, and these recommendations have been endorsed by over 130 countries and is the international anti-money laundering standard.

“In October 2001, the FATF expanded its mandate to deal with the issues of financing of terrorism, and took the important step of creating the 9 special recommendations on terrorist financing. These recommendations contain a set of measures aimed at combating the funding of terrorist acts and terrorist organizations and are complimentary to the 40 recommendations.”

The 40 plus 9 recommendations, Francis says, provide an enhanced, comprehensive and consistent framework of measures for combating money laundering and terrorist financing.

“Money laundering methods and techniques change in response to developing counter measures. In recent years, the FATF has noted increasing sophisticated combinations of techniques such as the increased use of legal persons to disguise the true ownership and control of illegal proceeds. There is also an increase in the use of professionals to provide advice and assistance in money laundering of criminal funds.”

Efforts are well underway to bring the national system into compliance and effectively implement recommendations. However, the biggest consideration in this endeavour, Francis says, is that it comes with a lot of financial responsibility.

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