Caribbean’s Financial Action Task Force Requires N.P.O. Legislation Says P.M. Briceño

Prime Minister John Briceño

The Non-Profit Organization Bill 2023 was brought to the House of Representatives at the last sitting. Since then, the Belize Network of N.G.O.’s has raised concerns about the lack of consultations with stakeholders prior to the bill’s introduction. It is expected that the proposed law will not replace the N.G.O. Act as was initially suggested, a decision that has quelled some of the N.G.O. community’s main concerns. But, there is a lot at stake for non-profit organizations and today we asked the prime minister about it.

Prime Minister John Briceño

“The issue with the NGO Bill is that these are things that are being forced upon us by the international community when it comes to the issue of money laundering and anti-terrorism and that kind for stuff. We have no control over it and the NPO it is very straight forward. All we are saying is that you just need to give an account where you are getting your money from, just for reporting to the FIU so that the international community can see we are doing our part. We cannot take any risk when it comes to the issue of the correspondent banking situation. We lost about eighty percent of the banking, corresponding banking relations we had earlier, probably ten years ago, so the ones we have we have to do everything we can to keep them. So, right now the Financial Action Task Force from the Caribbean will be making a new review of our work by the end of December. They will be here in June to see how far we are and these are some of the obligations they have imposed on us.”