New FATF Rules Must Be Applied Fairly Says Guernsey Regulator

by Jason Gorringe, Tax-News.com, london

09 July 2003

Guernsey's Financial Services Commission director General Peter Neville has said that major structural changes to the jurisdiction's regulatory regime will not be required after the publication of the FATF's (Financial Action Task Force) revised recommendations on anti money laundering.

According to Neville, Guernsey already has a perfectly adequate set of regulations in place, and insists that the island will not implement further rules that are not required of other financial centres.

"For example, the Basel requirements for customer due diligence on introduced business are undoubtedly tougher than the new FATF standards," Mr Neville said in a recent Guernsey Press and Star report. "Guernsey is very prepared to meet international standards that apply to everyone, but we will not apply requirements that are higher and which unfairly penalise our industry," he added.

Chairman of the Guernsey Association of Compliance Officers, Julian Parker, meanwhile said that the new recommendations contained nothing out of the ordinary and were pretty much what the industry was expecting. Mr Parker is also a member of the Guernsey Joint Money Laundering Steering Group, which is to be consulted after the GFC meets with its counterparts from Jersey and the Isle of Man to discuss the issue.

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