….political parties must be reviewed under the law – Chris RamAttorney General, Minister Anil Nandlall, has been the chief spokesperson in the Government benches seeking to deny the existence of exorbitant powers accorded to Ministers under the recommendations by the Caribbean Financial Action Taskforce (CFATF) regarding the proposed money laundering laws, but in his submissions to the Committee, Financial Analyst Christopher Ram, begs to differ.According to the submissions made to the Committee by Ram, the functions and powers of the Attorney General and the Minister of Finance under section two of the law should be transferred to an Anti-Money Laundering Authority and the courts respectively. According to Ram,Cheap Stitched Jerseys, the Committee should revise the provisions to take away any role of the Executive in the prosecution of Money Laundering.“Under this provision, if the Attorney General has reasonable grounds for believing that an entity has knowingly committed, attempted to commit,Cheap NFL Jerseys China, participated in or facilitating the commission of a terrorist act or is knowingly acting on behalf or on the direction of or in association with a person in a terrorist act, he can request the Minister of Finance to make an order declaring an entity as a “specified entity…Strangely,Cheap NFL Jerseys 2016, that term is not itself defined but is one of two entities under the definitions of “terrorist group.”Ram believes that the substantive Act should be amended to provide for the establishment of an Anti-Money Laundering Authority on the lines of Barbados, “and indeed our own Guyana Revenue Authority made up mainly of ex-officio members to whom the Director would report.”Ram further stated that there is a strong view in legal circles that the principal Act contains a number of provisions which may be in conflict with the Constitution.He suggested that “it would be extremely useful to have an attorney-at-law with knowledge and expertise in constitutional matters review the Act to identify any such provisions and to make recommendations to address them.”Ram further said that political parties should also fall under the ambit of the legislation given the huge amounts of money involved in campaign financing.In his submission to the committee, Ram said,Wholesale NFL Jerseys, “to promote their objectives, including competing in hugely expensive elections campaigns, political parties must raise considerable sums of money for various political objectives without any obligation to disclose their sources of income, even to their own members.”Such sources, he said, could include terrorist groups, narcotics-traffickers, persons engaged in trafficking in persons, bribing of officials and in other serious crimes.He said while politically exposed persons falls within the groups to which reporting entities are required to pay particular attention, neither them nor their parties are included in the schedule as a reporting entity.Ram posits, given the level of cash transactions in which the Guyana society and no doubt political parties are engaged, “the existing provision that imposes some restraint solely or mainly at the banking level would be both inadequate and ineffective.”Ram says that “the absence of campaign financing legislation,Wholesale Jerseys Free Shipping, or of any regulatory framework governing political parties, and the implications for the subverting of the country’s democratic process, make the inclusion of political parties as reporting entities vital.”