Evolution of AML/CFT in Guyana
Since the passage of the AML/CFT Act of 2009, the AML/CFT landscape, including the role of the AML/CFT Compliance Officer, has gone through various changes in line with the changing regulatory landscape. The ‘eras’ of Compliance include the ‘Pre-AML Act’ era, which describes the period prior to the passage of the AML/CFT Act, all the way to the current state of the AML/CFT Compliance in Guyana in 2021 and beyond.
Pre-AML Act
Prior to the AML Act being passed in 2009, Guyana’s only specific ML-related bill was the Money Laundering (Prevention) Act 2000. The Money Laundering (Prevention) Act 2000 was, for all intents and purposes, limited in scope and application. The more notable provisions in this act, however, do resemble a framework for what would later become a local AML regime, including setting out provisions such as:
Definitions and prohibition on money laundering, tipping off, falsification of documents.
The appointment of the BOG as the Supervisor for Financial Institutions.
Giving the Supervisor the authority to inspect the books of the financial institutions under its remit, issue guidelines to financial institutions, and even allow the Supervisor to transmit information to law enforcement about what it found during these inspections.
Required financial institutions to keep transaction records for 6 years after termination
Requiring financial institutions to pay special attention to all complex, unusual or large business transactions, whether completed or not, and to report them to the Supervisor if they appear related to money laundering.
The AML/CFT Compliance Officer had no role during this period.
2009-2012
On August 14, 2009, then President Bharrat Jagdeo signed the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 into law. This law contains the majority of the legal framework necessary for the formation of an AML regime in Guyana. This law also summarily repealed the Money Laundering (Prevention) Act 2000. After this, The Money Transfer Agencies Licensing Act was passed in August 2009, along with Money Transfer Licensing Regulations, passed in October 2009. Some of the key provisions set out for money transfers during this time included:
Making it mandatory for Money Transfers Agencies and their agents to be licensed by the Bank of Guyana yearly in order to carry out an MSB in Guyana.
Persons conducting money transfer businesses could also not conduct Cambio business simultaneously. Following this particular ruling, local banks and many other companies that operated both Cambios and money transfers had to close one of those businesses.
Reaffirmed that money transfer companies and agents had to follow the AML/CFT Act, and could lose their license if they fail to do so.
However, these pieces of legislation alone did not institutionalize any of these new AML requirements and, in practice, nothing much else happened for all of 2009 and much of 2010 in terms of AML. Much of the actual work in AML Compliance started after the introduction of the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism Regulations 2010, which was passed in October 2010. These regulations activated important elements of the AML/CFT Act, such as:
Identification and verification requirements
Employee training requirement
Record retention requirements for money laundering inquiries.
Suspicious activity reporting procedures.
Compliance Officer appointment issues
Supervisory authority issues
FIU ability to conduct audits of reporting entities
In addition to these regulations, a 1-page AML/CFT Amendment Act was passed in September 2010 that dealt with identification, record keeping, reporting, and training procedures. After this, however, there were no other amendments to the AML/CFT Act until 2015.
During this time, the FIU was formed in Guyana in 2010 and Guyana started its third round of mutual evaluations by FATF. The mutual evaluation was completed in early 2011 and presented at the Honduras FATF Plenary in May 2011 for consideration. Guyana was rated partially compliant or non-compliant on 16 core/key recommendations and partially compliant or non-compliant with 27 non-core recommendations. Due to these significant deficiencies, Guyana was placed on a system of follow-up and was required to report to FATF on its progress during every Plenary, which lasted until 2013 (more on that later).
During this period, the role of the Compliance Officer was now being formulated. Compliance officers during this period tended to be existing staff that worked part-time in Compliance. Their main duties during this early period were reporting threshold transactions and suspicious activity to the FIU. Reporting suspicious activity during this time, however, was not as specialized as it is today.
2013-2015
In 2013, the Bank of Guyana, which is the largest AML/CFT supervisor in Guyana, started issuing guidance to its regulated institutions: Banks, Money Services Businesses, Cambios, and Insurance Companies. The first guidance was the issued AML Guidelines for Insurance Businesses, which was issued in March 2013, followed by an Examination Manual, also published in March 2013. Following those two guidances, Supervisory Guideline #13 was issued in June 2013, which, at the time, had represented the largest set of guidance issued to supervised entities to date and remains an important guideline for many Compliance Professionals.
In May 2013, CFATF officially published a statement indicating that Guyana had not made significant progress in improving its compliance with the recommendations made in 2011. CFATF called on Guyana to Guyana ‘take steps to ensure that it addressed its AML/CFT deficiencies, giving Guyana up to November 2013 (6 months) to rectify this situation. Those deficiencies mainly included the need to pass new legislation and deal with specific recommendations, such as:
Fully criminalizing money laundering and terrorist financing offenses;
Addressing all the requirements on beneficial ownership;
Strengthening the requirements for suspicious transaction reporting, international co-operation, and the freezing and confiscation of terrorist assets, and
Fully implementing the UN conventions.
After no new legislation or other changes were made during those 6 months, CFATF added Guyana to its infamous grey-list, or ‘Jurisdictions under Increased Monitoring’, in November 2013. This greylist identifies countries that have strategic deficiencies in their regimes to counter money laundering, terrorist financing, and proliferation financing. Countries were therefore asked to ‘employ measures to protect their own financial institutions’ from Guyana.
No new legislation was passed after this grey-listing for almost 18 months, during which time Guyana held early elections in May 2015. After these elections, the passing of the AMLCFT Amendment Act 2015 in July 2015 sought to address the legislative amendments and recommendations proposed by FATF. The AMLCFT Regulations #4 was later passed in August 2015 and dealt with implementation measures connected to the AML/CFT Amendment Act 2015. By the end of 2015, however, Guyana was still on the grey list. During this time, however, Guyana was conducting its first National Risk Assessment, with assistance from the World Bank, with the final report being completed in 2017
The role of the Compliance Officer again evolved during this period. Compliance Officers were still sometimes part-time, but there was now a class of full-time Compliance Officers, especially at the local Commercial Banks. Responsibilities included reporting threshold transactions to the FIU, training staff, investigating and reporting suspicious activity, and formulating AML/CFT policies and procedures.
2016-2019
Three new bills were passed in 2016 to continue to address outstanding issues and improve the legislative framework in Guyana, as per FATF recommendation. These bills included:
The AML-CFT Amendment Bill #2- 2015, passed in January 2016
Anti-Terrorism and Terrorist Related Activities Act 2015, passed in January 2016
AML/CFT Amendment Act (Act 15 of 2016), passed in May 2016
Following the passage of these bills, Guyana was removed from FATF’s greylist on October 21, 2016’s FATF Plenary. In its statement, FATF noted that ‘Guyana has established the legal and regulatory framework to meet its commitments in its action plan regarding the strategic deficiencies’. Later, in November 2016, Guyana also exited CFATF’s greylist at the CFATF Plenary held in Turks and Caicos, completing this cycle.
In September 2018, The AML/CFT Act of 2018 was also passed. The main provisions of the bill were the creation of the AML/CFT National Coordination Committee, which consists of regulators/supervisors, FIU, tax authorities, and law enforcement officials. Other provisions dealt with the freezing and confiscating of funds derived from ML/TF, including a provision that all such funds be paid into the Consolidated Fund. The final main provision dealt with beneficial ownership and required the Registry to ‘keep, update, and maintain’ beneficial ownership information for companies, trusts and other legal arrangements ‘in its register’.
In December 2019, Guyana began its 2nd National Risk Assessment, with an aim to improve its AML regime in time for its 4th Mutual Evaluation, now due in 2024. This NRA exercise was completed in June 2021.
The role of the Compliance Officer again evolved during this period. Compliance Officers were mostly full-time, although many institutions also have Compliance staff with other responsibilities. The responsibilities evolved from just reporting, to actually investigating and reporting suspicious activity. Compliance departments continued to grow into larger departments, with lines of authority and specialized skills, such as investigators, sanctions specialists, KYC document specialists.
2020 and Beyond
With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, like many other positions, the role of the Compliance Officer has also been forced to become remote in many instances. From regulators and auditors conducting offsite and virtual reviews to compliance officers increasingly working from home on cloud-based platforms, work is changing and so is the Compliance Officer. With the introduction of new technologies, such as cryptocurrency, the blockchain, and the Metaverse, and the increasing threat of cybercrime, the work of the Compliance Officer has never been more important and is poised to change once more, in line with the needs of our institutions and of the financial system which we protect.
