Excerpts from Senator Don Wehby’s presentation to Parliament on the Companies (Amendment) Act 2017
This Bill is aimed at taking steps to make Jamaica compliant with international standards related to beneficial ownership, aimed at strengthening controls against the misuse of corporate vehicles and international exchange of information for tax compliance purposes.
In a recent Financial Action Task Force Report to the G20, on Beneficial Ownership, FATF (September 2016) indicated that international standards on beneficial ownership focuses on legal requirements for financial institutions, and other gatekeepers to collect and verify information on the ownership of legal persons and arrangements. It further indicated that this information should be reliable, and be readily available to investigators.
Implementation of these international standards has implications for some of the key areas we have to tackle as a country, if we are to achieve economic success. These key areas include money laundering and terrorism financing, corruption, lack of transparency, and poor corporate governance. The United Nations Department on Crime estimated that the total amount of criminal proceeds generated in 2009, excluding those derived from tax evasion, may have been approximately US$2.1 trillion, or 3.6 per cent of Global GDP in that year (2.3 to 5.5 per cent).
Criminals have gotten very sophisticated in their criminal activities. An article from the Guardian late last year indicated that “Fraud in the UK payments industry has soared by 53 per cent in a year as criminals resort to increasingly sophisticated tactics to trick people out of their personal details and steal their money”. We have also been affected by the lotto scamming. These criminals hide behind the legal personality of companies that can channel their tainted money into the financial system to make it appear legitimate.
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