VI’s Financial Services under threat again
The matter was raised recently when VI’s Financial Investigation Agency’s (FIA), Interim Acting Director Mr Alcedo D. Fahie, examined the 2018 allocations for the entity with the House of Assembly’s Standing Finance Committee.
Mr Fahie told the Committee Members of an imminent mutual evaluation of the Territory in 2019, by the Caribbean Financial Action Taskforce (CFATF) to evaluate its regime under its Anti-Money Laundering/Combating Financing Terrorism (AML/CFT).
The VI’s FIA is expected to be the lead agency in for the Territory for the evaluation but according to Fahie, “It is his belief, that FIA will not be able to meet their entire obligation that were planned, if they are not able to receive the entire Budget that was requested.”
The Interim Acting Director stated that he had a standing issue with the allocation for FIA—FIA’s original budget submitted was for $2.4 million. The Agency, under the Deputy Governor’s Office, has instead received an approved $1.6 million grant in the 2018 budget estimates.
Critical Role
The Agency is expected to, ahead of the evaluation; reach out to all non-financial business and business professional, all financial industry practitioners including all persons in the Territory.
The VI, as a CFATF member undergoes a series of rounds of mutual evaluation, with the Territory’s AML/CFT’s laws and the effectiveness under review
As such, the FIA plays a critical role in the evaluation process since it is the key agency that receives and evaluates suspicious reports in addition to serving as the regulator for the designated non-financial businesses and professions, as well as nonprofit organisations.
Other entities that would be involved in the mutual evaluation include the Attorney General’s Office, the Governor’s Office, the International Tax Authority, and Financial Services Commission as the Financial Services regulator and other law enforcement agencies such as the Courts, Police, Customs, and Immigration.
A failure on the part of the VI to successfully meet with the CFATF requirements could see the country being ‘blacklisted’ and could find itself facing additional economic pressures and obligations.
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5 Responses to “VI’s Financial Services under threat again”
'undesirable' - it is a vague term to simply cause someone or something or some territory, problems. this was
done to me after i moved to the BVI by a famous bank claiming they were looking for laundered money in my
pissant checking account here. If this was caused by some overbearing Caribbean organization as well as the
bank here itself and the filthy lieing BVI government itself, then maybe something very military will be done in
retaliation. Bullying some foreigner who merely moved to this region and merely opened a checking account at
a bank with branches throughout the Caribbean - is really asking for it. I'm sure the US President and others
concerned with the well being of Americans abroad also share the concern. Cut the crap and let people live.
Don't mess with this one.
HMM. There's is only one immigration officer who was trained to partake in this coming up agender in 2019. Guess who.???? Shame.