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alexk
Guest
Following Thursday night’s passage of the Anti-Terrorism (Amendment) bill in the Senate comes word that a minimum of three terrorist financing charges and approximately 30 cases of money laundering will be brought to the courts very shortly.
Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi revealed news of the upcoming cases as he wound up debate on the bill in the Senate on Thursday.
He said he was reliably informed and is “properly prepared” for the cases. He noted that the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) had found an increase in suspicious transactions/activities up from $4 billion in four years to $22.5 billion in one year.
The FIU’s latest report noted 112 cases of terrorist financing out of 877 suspicious transactions - a 62 per cent increase over the previous year. FIU intelligence also revealed 251 citizens suspected of being involved in the financing of terrorism and related offences.
Passage of the bill with Government, Opposition and Independent support at 10.40 pm on Thursday brought to successful climax almost 18 months of work on the issue. It followed Tuesday’s rocky but successful passage in the Lower House. (See editorial on Page A18)
Next step, Al-Rawi said, is operationalising the bill. He said T&T is now in fourth round evaluation by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the next round will be stiffer, since it focuses on how T&T is operationalising laws. Al-Rawi said at the September 5 FATF review meeting in Miami, he will have to explain T&T’s action plan and operationalising update.
“Operationalisation means how many convictions T&T has, do we have prosecutions, ongoing forfeitures, do we have seizures. If we don’t have operationalisation, we dead in the water.
After September 5, we then we go to FATF’s Paris meeting and will be marked on T&T’s perfomance,” he added.
He said T&T has already listed (with international agencies) the fact that T&T-born Shane Crawford is a terrorist.
“If Crawford went anywhere in the world he would be known as a terrorist. As a result, his property and assets have been frozen and anybody in T&T who dares intermeddle with supporting Shane Crawford will be caught in that matrix also,” the AG added.
One of the reasons the amended law was necessary was because Crawford had internationally proclaimed support for the Islamic State terror group, Al-Rawi said. He added that Islamic Front leader Umar Abdullah also told National Geographic he at one time had promoted Isis ideology.
Al-Rawi disagreed with Independent Senator Stephen Creese, who suggested a sunset clause - review period - for the bill. Al-Rawi said amendments were needed a long time and the formula would address various necessary areas, especially as T&T’s cyber environment “comes to life.”