GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

If you buy US cur­ren­cy from a rel­a­tive vis­it­ing T&T, you may be in breach of the Ex­change and Con­trol Act. This is be­cause there must be au­tho­ri­sa­tion from the Cen­tral Bank to do so. The is­sue was raised dur­ing Fri­day’s Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Fi­nance and Le­gal Af­fairs, which dis­cussed an in­quiry in­to the per­for­mance of the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit of T&T (FIU) in re­la­tion to im­prov­ing an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing and com­bat­ing the fi­nanc­ing of ter­ror­ism (AML/CFT) com­pli­ance.

Dur­ing the dis­cus­sions, JSC mem­ber Lau­rence His­lop asked, “If I am a reg­u­lar cit­i­zen and a fam­i­ly mem­ber comes from the US or from Cana­da and they have for­eign cur­ren­cy, are you say­ing to the pub­lic they are breach­ing the Ex­change and Con­trol Act by pur­chas­ing that for­eign cur­ren­cy from that fam­i­ly mem­ber?”

In re­sponse, the FIU’s di­rec­tor, Nigel Stod­dard, said the leg­is­la­tion was clear with re­gards to a per­son who does not have an au­tho­rised li­cence from the Cen­tral Bank for pur­chas­ing and sell­ing for­eign ex­change.

“Know­ing our cul­ture, that as­pect of it, if some­one is re­turn­ing, as the ex­am­ple you gave in the case of a fam­i­ly mem­ber, gen­er­al­ly that per­son is not, in my view, in the busi­ness of buy­ing or sell­ing for­eign ex­change.

“How­ev­er, once some­one in that ca­pac­i­ty goes to the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion, as in the ex­am­ple you would have giv­en, the banks have their cus­tomer due dili­gence re­quire­ments that they would per­form, and in­clud­ed in that would be the source of funds, and an hon­est per­son would in­di­cate where they would get their funds from. Again it comes back to the leg­is­la­tion, and the view is they de­ter­mine if it is con­sid­ered sus­pi­cious and can file a re­port with the FIU,” Stod­dard said.

Ac­cord­ing to the Ex­change Con­trol Act (Chap­ter 79.50, Sec­tion 6[1]), trans­ac­tions in­volv­ing the buy­ing, sell­ing, bor­row­ing or lend­ing of for­eign cur­ren­cy should on­ly be con­duct­ed through au­tho­rised deal­ers.

His­lop pressed fur­ther, ask­ing how much the FIU is con­cerned about the il­le­gal sale of for­eign cur­ren­cy, as he specif­i­cal­ly not­ed there are sev­er­al re­tail out­lets through­out the coun­try ad­ver­tis­ing the pur­chase of US dol­lars.

Stod­dard, how­ev­er, said this was out­side of the FIU’s re­mit and in­stead would lie gen­er­al­ly with­in the Cen­tral Bank. Patrick Solomon, in­spec­tor of fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions at the Cen­tral Bank, re­it­er­at­ed that ac­cord­ing to the law, peo­ple must be au­tho­rised deal­ers to buy and sell for­eign ex­change. How­ev­er, he said the Cen­tral Bank was look­ing at po­ten­tial amend­ments to the Ex­change Con­trol Act to strength­en T&T’s fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work.

Com­mit­tee mem­ber Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al-Ram­di­al, in her con­tri­bu­tion, ad­vised au­thor­i­ties to ex­am­ine some thresh­olds, in­clud­ing al­low­ing busi­ness­es to ac­cept a cer­tain amount of mon­ey from mem­bers of the pub­lic. She added rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers need to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion whether they want to cre­ate an of­fence that could then crim­i­nalise some­one who buys for­eign cur­ren­cy from rel­a­tives re­turn­ing from abroad.

Amid re­ports that many have turned to the black mar­ket to pur­chase for­eign ex­change, ear­li­er this month the Cen­tral Bank list­ed the au­tho­rised deal­ers of for­eign ex­change in the coun­try.

In a no­tice on its web­site, the bank said 13 com­pa­nies were li­cenced as au­tho­rised for­eign ex­change deal­ers in T&T as of Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024.

They are ANSA Bank; Citibank (T&T); First Cit­i­zens Bank; CIBC Caribbean Bank (T&T); JMMB Bank (T&T); RBC Roy­al Bank (T&T); Re­pub­lic Bank; Sco­tia­bank T&T; ANSA Mer­chant Bank; De­vel­op­ment Fi­nance Ltd; Massy Fi­nance GFC Ltd, NCB Mer­chant Bank (T&T); and the Ex­port-Im­port Bank of T&T (EX­IM­BANK). Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the Cen­tral Bank not­ed that Glob­al Ex­change T&T, GraceKennedy (T&T), Massy Re­mit­tance Ser­vices (Trinidad) Ltd, and Mil­len­ni­um Fi­nance and Leas­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd are au­tho­rised to op­er­ate as bu­reaux de change (cur­ren­cy ex­change in the coun­try) op­er­a­tors.