Govt, Opposition unite to pass FATF Compliance Bill

GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­[email protected]

In a rare dis­play of com­plete bi­par­ti­san con­sen­sus, the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Fri­day ap­proved the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (FATF Com­pli­ance) Bill, 2026, with all 36 mem­bers present vot­ing in favour and none vot­ing against.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie out­lined that the bill amends a broad range of leg­is­la­tion con­nect­ed to an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing, counter-ter­ror­ism fi­nanc­ing, and reg­u­la­to­ry over­sight—key ar­eas iden­ti­fied un­der the Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force (FATF) com­pli­ance frame­work.

Among the laws amend­ed were: Trustee Or­di­nance (1939); Pro­ceeds of Crime Act; Po­lice Ser­vice Act; Reg­is­tra­tion of Clubs Act; FIU of T&T Act; Com­pa­nies Act; Part­ner­ship Act; Reg­is­tra­tion of Busi­ness Names Act; Li­cens­ing of Deal­ers in Pre­cious Met­als and Stones Act; Non-Prof­it Or­gan­i­sa­tions Act (2019) and Counter Pro­lif­er­a­tion Fi­nanc­ing Act (2025).

The amend­ments aim to strength­en the coun­try’s reg­u­la­to­ry ar­chi­tec­ture, im­prove trans­paren­cy in cor­po­rate and non-prof­it sec­tors, tight­en re­port­ing oblig­a­tions, and en­hance the in­ves­tiga­tive pow­ers of law en­force­ment agen­cies.

Fol­low­ing the read­ing of the ques­tion by the Speak­er, the House moved to a di­vi­sion. Every mem­ber present—from both Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion bench­es—reg­is­tered a “Yes” vote.

One mem­ber was record­ed as ab­sent.

The pas­sage of the bill marks a sig­nif­i­cant step in T&T’s on­go­ing ef­forts to main­tain in­ter­na­tion­al com­pli­ance stan­dards and avoid height­ened mon­i­tor­ing by glob­al fi­nan­cial watch­dogs.

A ma­jor fo­cus of the bill is ben­e­fi­cial own­er­ship trans­paren­cy — re­quir­ing com­pa­nies, part­ner­ships, trustees and firms to main­tain ac­cu­rate records of who ul­ti­mate­ly owns or con­trols en­ti­ties, sub­mit up­dat­ed in­for­ma­tion to the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al and cor­rect in­ac­cu­ra­cies with­in set dead­lines.

It in­tro­duces of­fences for sub­mit­ting false or mis­lead­ing in­for­ma­tion and em­pow­ers au­thor­i­ties to re­move in­ac­cu­rate en­tries.

It al­so cre­ates a new ad­min­is­tra­tive fine sys­tem in sev­er­al laws, al­low­ing cer­tain breach­es to be set­tled by pay­ment of a pre­scribed fine in­stead of full crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion.

The bill al­so ex­pands reg­u­la­to­ry over­sight in key ar­eas.

It broad­ens the de­f­i­n­i­tion of “fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion” to in­clude cer­tain elec­tron­ic mon­ey is­suers ap­proved by the Cen­tral Bank, tight­ens su­per­vi­sion of non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tions and mem­bers’ clubs to re­duce abuse risks, strength­ens the pow­ers of the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit, and up­dates re­port­ing re­quire­ments un­der the counter-pro­lif­er­a­tion fi­nanc­ing frame­work.

To­geth­er, the amend­ments are de­signed to close gaps iden­ti­fied un­der FATF stan­dards while mod­ernising en­force­ment tools and com­pli­ance mech­a­nisms.

Dur­ing the de­bate, Je­re­mie di­rect­ed at­ten­tion to large pools of wealth hid­den with­in trust struc­tures.

He em­pha­sised that while T&T is not con­sid­ered a ma­jor off­shore fi­nan­cial cen­tre, the coun­try is home to in­di­vid­u­als with ex­tra­or­di­nar­i­ly high lev­els of wealth, much of which is not held di­rect­ly, but in trusts man­aged on their be­half.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go might not be a huge ju­ris­dic­tion in terms of an off­shore cen­tre, but there are many in­di­vid­u­als in this coun­try who have mil­lions of dol­lars… in very, very, very high mil­lions of dol­lars. They don’t hold them of­ten in their hands. They are held in trust for them,” Je­re­mie said.

Je­re­mie sug­gest­ed that these trust-based arrange­ments are pre­cise­ly what in­ter­na­tion­al an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing ex­perts are fo­cused on, stress­ing that the FATF has in­creased scruti­ny on ben­e­fi­cial own­er­ship and on fi­nan­cial ve­hi­cles that can ob­scure the ori­gins and con­trol of wealth.

He made it clear that he would not act as a shield for those at­tempt­ing to evade trans­paren­cy.