Director of the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), Susan Francois, says T&T nationals who are part of Isis (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) would be monitored by the watchdog agency. “There may be negative news about particular persons or particular situations. For example, if you open the newspapers now, you will see a lot of information about persons from T&T who have allegedly gone to Isis to fight.
“We pay attention to that, we would try to have those persons of interest, we put them on a checklist. We keep looking at them and see if we get any new information on those persons,” she said yesterday, during the FIU’s public awareness seminar at the Marriott Hotel, Port-of-Spain, to educate the media on the roles and function of the FIU.
In September 2014, questions were raised when a video surfacing on United Kingdom-based video-sharing Web site, LiveLeak, which showed Islamic insurgents playing with the head of a decapitated man in Syria and featured a man talking with what appears to be a T&T accent. Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, who leads the National Security Council, had said in September she had no information on whether any T&T national joined Isis.
Then national security minister Gary Griffith said no members of Isis were in T&T and assured all mechanisms to monitor the entry of persons who may be deemed as a risk to T&T were in place. When FIU obtains information, it is handed to the law enforcement agencies for investigation. Asked whether the FIU is concerned by not getting feedback from the investigation by law enforcement agencies on any information passed to them about financing of terrorism matters, she said:
“Financing of terrorism is a serious offence. It leads to loss of life, personal violence, it should be taken seriously. We have been taking steps to obtain the necessary information (from law enforcement agencies) about where those matters are.”
The FIU has been in existence since 2010. One of the main accomplishments which the FIU can be proud of is ensuring that the unit was compliant with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). The FATF had threatened to blacklist T&T back then. “We had to make sure that we were operational in every area of the law. We had to conduct analysis, we had to begin supervision, outreach, awareness and sharing of information in a short time.”
Concerning its other accomplishments and without giving details, Francois said the FIU took two entities before the court who had gambling operations and were not registered with the FIU. The attorneys representing the businesses indicated they were closing down and had de-registered but the Companies Registry continued to show they were still in existence.
In another case, the FIU has provided assistance to the Internal Revenue Service in the United States.