"The Laundrymen" by bestselling author Jeffrey Robinson published in l994 provided an astonishing description of what some have described as the third largest business in the world, laundering money to conceal its source and make it look "clean". Among the major practitioners are, of course, the drug barons with their huge illegal profits which they seek to launder into seemingly legitimate bank accounts and businesses through a variety of mechanisms, including the setting up of dozens of shell companies in various jurisdictions.

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), in their various covert operations, were also adept in this field using numerous CIA `front' companies to launder their funds mainly provided by the government in a secret budget but sometimes as in the case of the Iran/Contra affair generated by their own illicit operations.

Others who have been involved in money laundering on a massive scale range from Saddam Hussein, reportedly then holding funds derived from the original Gulbenkian 5% `royalty' on all oil produced in Iraq subsequently taken over by Saddam's Ba'ath party, controlled exclusively by Saddam, of some US $32 billion laundered through loans and investments in a variety of businesses, to Manuel Noriega of Panama, Nicolai Ceausescu of Romania and Todor Zhivkov of Bulgaria and other communist dictators, Baby Doc Duvalier, the Marcoses and Mobutu Sese Seko.

The financial institutions involved ranged from the notorious Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) to Banco Ambrosiano (whose Roberto Calvi was found hanging under Blackfriars bridge in London) to banks which because of negligence or unawareness of the problem accepted the deposit of illicit funds. Incidentally, the extraordinary incompetence of the Bank of England in monitoring the BCCI before it was eventually closed - it ignored a variety of clear warnings - makes any defects of our own central bank in supervising the Globe Trust and Investment Company Limited seem negligible by comparison.

The passing of money laundering legislation and a tightening up of regulations in many parts of the world, but not all, in the last decade has been an effort to deal with this massive problem. The theory has been that if you can't stop the narcotics industry you can at least make it difficult for the barons to `legitimise' their ill gotten gains. And of course laundering is also involved in by terrorists (Abu Nidal had bank accounts all over the world) and tax evaders.

In Guyana, money laundering legislation has been passed but it has not been implemented as the supervisory authority has not been put in place. Some legitimate businessmen have noted that similar legislation overseas has made even normal trading transactions more difficult. This can be a serious nuisance but is a price that may have to be paid. For at the end of the day the ultimate horror for Guyana would be to become a narco economy, controlled by drug related interests. Already, as Mr Fenty has noted in his Friday column, there have been a number of questionable new buildings and investments and it is reasonable to expect that there has been a certain amount of laundering of funds into bank accounts and businesses here, though the extent of this is not at all clear.

The overwhelming majority of Guyanese will agree that one development that must be avoided at all costs is to allow the expansion of drug trafficking here and of drug production to the stage where policemen, the judiciary and politicians end up in the pay of criminals trading in narcotics. We are a long way from this though there have been some ominous signs. To stop that, some legislative restrictions are tolerable and necessary. Our current political instability and ethnically based tensions are unpleasant, but the nightmare we must all unite to prevent ever becoming a reality is a situation in which the shots are ultimately called by ruthless criminals. The dreadful example of Colombia is there for us all to see.