Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi says Government is bringing new legislation to take the proceeds away from those who benefit from crime in T&T and those who attempt to hide their ill-gotten gains from crime.
He made the comment during his contribution to yesterday’s House of Representatives debate on the Finance (No 2) Bill, which was presented by Finance Minister Colm Imbert.
The legislation seeks to provide, among other measures, an amnesty for income tax payment for business owners.
Al-Rawi, however, said the bill would specifically target those who benefitted from criminal proceeds.
“Let me flag right now, we intend to unmask the beneficial owners. We intend to have equitable owners produced to the public so that you can no longer sequester assets using a legal nominee to hide a beneficial ownership.
“We are going behind the profit of crime by hitting the hardest zone possible,” the AG added.
Al-Rawi said owners would have to “explain their wealth or lose it” after the prosed civil asset forfeiture legislation, which requires the support of the Opposition, was approved.
“We are going to say if you cannot explain your wealth you are going to lose your wealth.
“So every drug man who owns a massive mansion, every person who is involved in corruption, who on paper making $5 a month, $2,000 a month and has assets coming through their nose and can’t explain how it was acquired, all of those people, under the civil assets forfeiture regime, are going to be at risk of losing your wealth,” he said.
He added the matters would have to be determined in a civil court and by a judge.
“So there are significant effects to this and I am convinced that this is the approach T&T should have in gear,” he said.
In an apparent reference to the recent implementation of speed testing devices on the nation’s highways, Al-Rawi said: “Imagine if six speed guns can change the culture of T&T, to cause this country to slow down overnight, imagine what the spectre of civil assets forfeiture would do.”
He added: “This is how we will grapple with corruption, this is how we will tell people you better be able to explain how you have acquired this (wealth).”
In explaining some of the issues they had to deal with, Al-Rawi said some 28,000 companies have not filed all of their annual returns and more than 29,000 had filed no annual returns at all. He said there was need for new legislation to ensure that the so-called big fish were caught when crimes were committed in T&T.
He added: “I am putting T&T on notice that we are going to aggressively move behind all those defaulting companies in a very tight matrix approach.”
Al-Rawi said defaulting companies would face severe penalties and those which failed to file their returns would be struck off the register, adding that amendments to the Company’s Act and the FIU Act are coming.