Today was the first day of an FIU workshop aimed at providing stakeholders with the tools and skills needed to conduct a money laundering and terrorist financing national risk assessment. The assessment will identify the main sectors where there is a risk that money laundering and terrorist financing could take place, and recommend policies and actions to control and mitigate them. We spoke to FIU Director Kent Claire about the assessment and where the FIU is looking for potential high risk sectors...
Kent Clare, Director. FIU
"It's a national risk assessment that countries are required to have in place. It is a FATF (Financial Actions Talk Force) requirement but beyond that there are some countries who have done national risk assessments even outside of that. So basically what it does, it allows you to determine what is the possibility or the risk of any type of financial crime. Not only financial crimes, but other types like cybercrime and so on that could potentially harm your jurisdiction and its ability to effect cross border transactions and international trade. Some countries have done it within 2 years. We are targeting something like 18 months. The process began back in September and we are hopeful that we can conclude hopefully early 2018, but it remains to be the same."
Alex Courtenay, 7News
"Are there any specific areas of sectors that we are looking at that are particularly susceptible to this kind of risk that are very high risk?"
Kent Clare, Director. FIU
"Most persons would readily identify maybe our banking sector and we in Belize feel that the banking sector has been very responsive to anti money laundering issues for some time to the point where certain banks are refusing to do business with certain types of industries or individuals if those persons are not fulfilling all of the bank's requirements for customer due diligence and so on. So definitely the first thing that would face us would be our banking system and the government of Belize has to be concerned about that because it's the banking system that underpins everything else that we would want to do."
The FIU and other stakeholders will be using the World Bank's National Money Laundering Risk Assessment Tool to identify the potential risks.
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