F.I.U. Commends Financial Institutions for Compliance, Planning Extended Reach

And while it has only been a matter of days since Kent Clare was appointed the new Director of the FIU, he told the media today that he has hit the ground running. Although he has been transitioning into his new position, he spoke with the media about some of his initial observations on what needs to be addressed. One of the areas that Clare pointed out that needs better monitoring is the offshore sector.

Kent Clare, Director, F.I.U.

“I think that my immediate response, the sense that I got from discussing with the staff who have been involved in this for quite a long time is that, we feel that we have a very sensible response in terms of compliance with the institutions. So, your regular domestic institutions and so on, I don’t get the sense that there are any problems there. Now, ofcourse, we do have to look at other areas which may be challenging and you are looking for example at the monitoring of the free zones and certainly the offshore sector. That kind of monitoring, I think the returns are not all fully in for us to make an assessment that we are quite comfortable with those compliance regimes that are in those particular industries. So, domestic I don’t have any difficulties but, I think I get the sense that we get very sensible, high level kind of compliance in those areas. But certainly with those that exist in these kind of specialist regimes, we have to heighten the monitoring there.”

Reporter

“With the disclosures in the Panama Papers, some names of companies in Belize were in fact called. Is that something that you would look at seriously to see if there is any illegality that was disclosed and found to be so?”

Kent Clare

Kent Clare

“I know of course that by the time that broke I was Commissioner of Income Tax then. We were looking to see and the person who continues to hold that information; what has been disclosed so far as you will note is not, it is like a tip of the iceberg as far as I am able to understand. But, certainly, based on the discussions that we have had with our staff over at the FIU, the FIU view would simply to see whether these persons are – to check their temperature then to basically to see if these are legitimate operations, working closely with the International Financial Services Commission to see if these are registered either through the; either registered domestically with tax or registered with the offshore registry and to see if there are any indicators, any red flags in relation to them. So I am quite certain that that was done based on the information that has been disclosed so far.”