St Vincent Suffers Setback In Anti-Money Laundering Campaign

by Amanda Banks, Tax-News.com, London

27 November 2001

Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves was forced to reveal in Parliament last Wednesday that the Caribbean offshore jurisdiction's campaign to improve relations with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and secure removal from the multilateral organisation's blacklist of 'uncooperative' countries has suffered a setback.

New legislation allowing other countries to extradite citizens on money laundering charges came just too late, the Prime Minister admitted following questioning from the Opposition leader Arnhim Eustace, and allowed Thierry Nano, a joint French and St Vincent citizen under investigation by the US authorities, to slip through the net.

According to the Managing Director of the country's national carrier, St Vincent and the Grenadines Air, M. Nano left on a chartered flight to Martinique following the issuance of a warrant for his extradition by the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida last week. However, lawyers for the offshore bank director have said that they do not know his whereabouts, and police in Martinique have also confessed ignorance.

This latest development could prove embarassing for the government of St Vincent and the Grenadines, as although the licences of New Bank Ltd and Nano and Sons Ltd were revoked last year, they were later reinstated when the offshore banks supplied some requested documents.

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