Leaders to fight off dirty money
PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad – Leaders at a Caribbean summit have agreed to work together to fight money-laundering in the region’s many offshore financial centres, which recently have come under attack from international regulators. It was in the region’s interest that it not be seen as “a place which harbours monies from corruption, monies from drug trafficking and sends the signal to criminals ‘please come here and bring your monies – no questions asked no matter where it came from,”’ Bahamian Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham told reporters Tuesday night. He said the 14-nation Caribbean Community trade bloc had agreed Tuesday to co-operate to develop policies and enact regulations and laws to keep drug money and other illegal profits from being laundered at offshore banks. The impetus came from a technical report from the mainly rich members of the Paris-based Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) which expressed “concerns about removing bank secrecy and confidentiality, having far more disclosure and oversight powers,” Prime Minister Said Musa of Belize told The Associated Press. Belize recently passed money-laundering legislation “to keep out dirty money, so we don’t have a problem with concerns about regulations,” he said. But the industry also has come under pressure from Britain, which warned this year that its overseas territories must better regulate the offshore sector if they want to remain British. In the Caribbean, those include the Cayman Islands, whose offshore sector is second only to Switzerland, as well as the British Virgin Islands and Bermuda. 
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