Government is going after white-collar criminals because it is their nefarious activity which spawns street crimes and leads to ’the blood that is let by our young people’, Finance Minister Karen Nunez-Tesheira said yesterday.

She made the comment as she wound up the debate on the ’Act to establish the Financial Intelligence Unit of Trinidad and Tobago’ in the House of Representatives yesterday.

’What is the crime that the FIU is intended to police? It is the crime that is dressed up nicely in a white shirt and a tie and looks so respectable. We sometimes forget that those persons involved in organised crime are really the true criminals,’ she said.

’And the symptom of that crime is what we see expressed on our streets ... When we see young men and women who are losing their lives and their blood being shed ... the real variable is organised crime. Who is laundering the money, it cannot be the small man.’

She said the FIU Act, along with a package of legislation which includes the Proceeds of Crime Amendment Act and subsidiary legislation Financial Obligations regulations, was a necessary measure to root out the scourge of money laundering, ’which starts not in the hills of Laventille but somewhere else, where there are persons with the means and ability to launder their money, who are able bring in the guns and destroy the very fabric of our society and I dare say the soul of our nation’.

The FIU gives life and effect to the Proceeds of Crime Act, which deals with the issue of money laundering.

Nunez-Tesheira said the list of businesses captured by money laundering provisions has been widened.

’This schedule recognises that money laundering is not restricted to financial institutions, but its scope and breadth is very wide. It includes real estate businesses, the sale of motor vehicles, courier services, gaming houses, jewelry, private members’ firms and even the professions of accounting and law,’ she said, adding that the FIU would have regulatory authority over financial institutions, as well as all the businesses included in the schedule. She said there was also coverage for businesses such as credit unions and cambios under the current legislation.

Nunez-Tesheira said currently, there was no legal compulsion on financial institutions to examine the background of clients, examine complex transactions or unusually large transactions. She said there were no regulations or legislation which makes record-keeping mandatory.

Nunez-Tesheira said the FIU will receive reports of suspicious activity from financial institutions and list businesses, analyse the reports and disseminate the information to the appropriate intelligence or law-enforcement agency.

’It would collect information, analyse the information and determine whether there is sufficient basis upon which it can go to the law enforcement agency - the intention is that it would be the Financial Investigations Bureau which would be set up. The FIU has the power to request further information and having gotten further information, send it on to the next stage for investigation.’

Under the bill, where a member of the Board of Directors, CEO, owner or partner of a financial institution or listed business knowingly authorises, or acquiesces in the omission to provide the additional information requested by the FIU, that person is guilty of an offence and is liable to a fine of $500,000 and imprisonment for five years. A listed business convicted of this offence faces the same fine and imprisonment of five years and a further fine of $50,000 for each day that the offence continues.

Nunez-Tesheira said the economic ally depressed communities, cited as the crime hot spots, were 20 years ago poor, matriarchal, single parent units, with even higher levels of unemployment. She said, therefore, that the upsurge in crime could not just be about economics, or just the family structure.

’There is a new variable and it is organised crime,’ she said.

’This Government would not stand idly by, and will not be defeated. It is committed to win the war against crime, the war (waged by criminals) against the people and the soul of the nation.’