Group of Supervisors Taking Lead in CFATF’s Mutual Evaluation Exercise

The Group of Supervisors is working in the background to ensure that all these necessary legislative amendments are being done to align Belize’s financial regulations with international standards.  The group functions under the authority of the National Anti-Money Laundering Committee and it is made up of the Central Bank, the Financial Services Commission, the Financial Intelligence Unit and the Office of the Supervisor of Insurance. Last week, the group issued an advisory updating the public on the process. We spoke with Leni Ysaguirre McGann, the Director at the F.I.U., about the exercise and whether she believes that these amendments are moving through Parliament a bit too fast.

Leni McGann

Leni McGann, Director, Financial Intelligence Unit

“The fourth round of evaluation is really preparing us for or focused on the two components that you referred to which is technical compliance and effectiveness. In the third round we look a lot at whether or not you had laws in place and in the fourth round what we are looking at are of course if the laws are still in place and if they are up to date in terms of the how the standards that we are being assessed against are evolving, but more importantly we are looking at implementation. In terms of the advisory from the group of supervisor you would have seen it specifically references a suite of legislation which is comprehensive that we have proposed and some of those pieces of legislation are in different stages of the legislative process as you are. Some of it is currently before the house. I definitely think that it could have been at a more measured pace but definitely the regulatory agencies who are involved in the gap analysis would have had to accommodate and settle and adjust to the new arena we are living in post COVID. It certainly had an impact in terms of our efforts and how we were preparing and even how we could do out work. I think having adjusted to what the new realities are in terms of work and work flows we certainly found ourselves in a good stride to complete the analysis.”