Today’s report on a court case between Atlantis World Management and RBC Royal Bank is likely to spark more debate on the current de-risking by commercial banks. This is done partly to safeguard their own key correspondence banking relationships mainly in the US, due to the threat of severe penalties in the global crackdown on money-laundering and the financing of terrorism.
Coincidentally or not, independent parliamentarian and United People’s (UP) party leader Rolando Brison on Monday announced he would be submitting consumer banking protection legislation this week. He spoke of “ever-changing regulations or application procedures” depriving citizens and legally established businesses of their rights, which in his proposal would include having a bank account.
Mention was made of European Union (EU) rules to that effect, but there is also mounting international pressure to preclude any dubious transactions. Linked to that effort is the need to implement recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and its Caribbean branch CFATF, something Justice Minister Egbert Yurendi Doran discussed this week in Antigua.
St. Maarten has only a revised Penal Procedural Code still to approve, but this must be done in conjunction with the other Dutch Caribbean countries Aruba and Curaçao. The hope is that a so-called “public statement” listing the jurisdiction as a risk to the financial system can be prevented, even though the compliance deadline was surpassed.
There is no reason to believe the new minister won’t be successful, as Parliament has already adopted all the other required law changes. Any respite would be just that, however, because the process of money flows coming under increasing scrutiny appears to be an unstoppable trend.
