By: Ken Richards
St Kitts and Nevis (WINN): The Caribbean Community – CARICOM – has taken issue with the European Commission Publication of a List of High Risk Jurisdictions with Strategic Anti-money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Deficiencies.
The region sees this latest development as an attack on CARICOM member states.
CARICOM says in a statement that it deplores the latest attack by the European Commission on the economic well-being of some member states of the regional grouping which were named in that list.
According to the statement, these Caribbean countries will be subject to enhanced due diligence measures by the European Union states.
According to CARICOM, the list, which includes four (4) CARICOM Member States was published despite the European Council, in objecting to a list submitted for approval last year, concluding that the Commission’s submission was “not established in a transparent and resilient process that actively incentivises affected countries to take decisive action while also respecting their right to be heard.”
CARICOM contends that the impacted countries were neither informed nor consulted prior to this month’s publication of the list.
In making its case, CARICOM says it should be noted that of the four Caribbean states included in the Commission’s list, one has been delisted by the Financial Action Task Force since February 2020, while the other three member states had already entered into agreed action plans with the FATF.
CARCIOM is urging European Union member states to “once again reject the Commission’s proposal as callous and premature”.
The four countries blacklisted are said to be Barbados, Jamaica, the Bahamas, and Trinidad and Tobago.
