Last week, by Senate resolution, a new Integrity Commission was appointed, but tonight, the news is that already two of them have stepped down. The Prime Minister's Officer today confirmed the resignations, and reports tell us they are accountant Breth Feinstein and banker Steve Duncan. Why have they stepped down so quickly? Well it has to do with a new term in Belize's banking, corporate and governance circles: Politically Exposed Persons - calls PEP's for short.
A release from the Prime Minister's office explains it like this:
"Onerous disclosure obligations are visited upon PEPS, their family, friends and associates. It is because members of the Integrity Commission are now likely to be considered PEPS that the two withdrawals have come."
The Prime Minister discussed it last week Wednesday at the House Meeting - a meeting specially convened just to pass Bills designed to ensure compliance with the requirements of the Financial Action Task Force - which is forcing the PEPS law upon Belize:..
Prime Minister Dean Barrow
"The definition of politically exposed persons is indeed in my view unnecessarily wide, but again it is there because it seems that we changed anything even a word in the templates that have been handed down to us at our peril. The reporting requirements to the various commercial banks are extremely onerous and one can easily see how people will have to hire accountants in order to comply and it is very discouraging, these people say this is all in an effort to achieve a greater transparency to stop transnational crimes and that these things are necessary to preserve our democratic way of life. But they are going so far that for small countries such as ours some of their measures are actually going to result in retarding our democracy. There is a current member of the Belize Social Security Board who is by virtue of SSB shareholding in BEL - a member as well, a director of the Belize Electricity Limited"
"The definition and certainly one commercial bank even before the passage of this bill has adopted this ridiculously wide ranging definition. That definition has meant that that member who is on SSB having been appointed by us but who is a life long public servant and who wish to continue to serve his community.... that definition has resulted in the people telling his that he has to fill out all these declarations. They get absolutely into your business, they want to know if you bought a dog yesterday and how many puppies the dog had and he has said to me "I resign.""
We have heard of at least one other high profile resignation - this one from the Central Bank Board of Directors.
So, after years of inaction, the integrity commission is stalled again, and the release says Government will have to begin anew the search for persons prepared to serve notwithstanding the PEP classification. There is no timeline for this search.
