NCB Merchant Bank defends $2M cash shipment

NCB Mer­chant Bank (Trinidad and To­ba­go) Lim­it­ed says a US$2 mil­lion cash ship­ment seized at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port last month was a le­git­i­mate trans­ac­tion con­duct­ed in the or­di­nary course of busi­ness be­tween reg­u­lat­ed fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.

The state­ment came af­ter a news­pa­per re­port­ed to­day that au­thor­i­ties had launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the seizure of a white cro­cus bag con­tain­ing US$2 mil­lion in cash at the South Ter­mi­nal of Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on June 25. Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, the mon­ey orig­i­nat­ed from NCB Mer­chant Bank and was des­tined for Mi­a­mi, with a stopover in Ja­maica, be­fore Cus­toms and Ex­cise of­fi­cials seized it over what they de­scribed as "cer­tain trans­ac­tion­al and ac­count­abil­i­ty de­fi­cien­cies".

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued to­day, NCB Mer­chant Bank said the cash ship­ment ref­er­enced in re­cent me­dia re­ports be­longed to the bank and re­lat­ed to a trans­ac­tion con­duct­ed in the or­di­nary course of busi­ness with an­oth­er reg­u­lat­ed fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion.

The bank said the trans­ac­tion was ini­ti­at­ed and ex­e­cut­ed in ac­cor­dance with its es­tab­lished op­er­a­tional pro­ce­dures, as well as all ap­plic­a­ble le­gal, reg­u­la­to­ry and se­cu­ri­ty re­quire­ments.

Ac­cord­ing to the bank, the cash formed part of a le­git­i­mate in­ter-in­sti­tu­tion­al trans­ac­tion and was in­tend­ed to tran­sit with­in the NCB Group un­der es­tab­lished busi­ness arrange­ments.

NCB Mer­chant Bank said that al­though the phys­i­cal cash would have been in tran­sit, the un­der­ly­ing val­ue of the trans­ac­tion would not. It said that once the tran­sit process was com­plet­ed, it would re­ceive full com­pen­sa­tion in Unit­ed States dol­lars for the cash, en­sur­ing its fi­nan­cial po­si­tion and eco­nom­ic in­ter­est re­mained pro­tect­ed through­out the trans­ac­tion.

The bank said it con­tin­ues to co­op­er­ate ful­ly with reg­u­la­to­ry and su­per­vi­so­ry au­thor­i­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go and Ja­maica and re­mains com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing all re­views and ad­min­is­tra­tive process­es as­so­ci­at­ed with the mat­ter.

It added that it would be in­ap­pro­pri­ate to com­ment fur­ther while the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties con­duct their re­view.

NCB Mer­chant Bank said it is a li­censed fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion un­der the Fi­nan­cial In­sti­tu­tions Act, 2008, and an Au­tho­rised Deal­er un­der the Ex­change Con­trol Act, Chap. 79:50. It said the leg­is­la­tion per­mits it, sub­ject to ap­plic­a­ble le­gal and reg­u­la­to­ry re­quire­ments, to im­port and ex­port notes of any class that are, or have at any time been, le­gal ten­der in Trinidad and To­ba­go or any oth­er ju­ris­dic­tion.

The bank said it re­mains com­mit­ted to main­tain­ing the high­est stan­dards of com­pli­ance, gov­er­nance, trans­paren­cy, risk man­age­ment and op­er­a­tional in­tegri­ty across all as­pects of its busi­ness.