Minister of State Coye is also government's tip of the spear when it comes to the CFATF assessment - that's short for the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force. That's happening this year, and it means that all Belize's money laundering and countering finance in terrorism legislation and measures have to be airtight.
That's what gave birth to the new bill governing non profit organizations - which would have a much higher standard of financial transparency and reporting.
It's generated backlash against the government for lack of understanding and consultation - but Coye explained the context today:
Christopher Coye, Minister of State, Ministry of Finance
"The reality is when those amendments or laws were being put in place, they were very reactive and in effect, a patch up job that was being done way back when the third round peer review was going on and at this point in time, what's important, in the peer review coming up is two things, not one. In the past it used to be on technical compliance, now it is on both technical compliance and effectiveness in enforcement. So if people are non-compliant, that will reflect very badly on us, on the country and we expose ourself, we jeopardize our rating and expose ourselves to being blacklisted. So the NPO bill, in reality, is an effort to establish a more customized mechanism for MLTPA purposes for NPOs, it actually brings down the obligations, it reduces the level AML obligations and compliance obligations that NPOs need to adhere to but at the same time, meets the FAFTF recommendations so it actually is beneficial for the NPOs. What I understand was difficult was that there was a working group established March of last year in which NPOs were participating in and have participated in for roughly a year. What the issue appears to be is that the bill itself, so these consultations or working ground involved NPOs or working group of NPOs over the past year. What I understand did not occur is that the FIU in those working groups and otherwise, never showed the bill when it was finalized but as far as I understand, the bill was being formulated over the past couple months and only was completed a few weeks ago so yes there's a tight timeline that we have to meet because we have to have all these technical compliant issues, including the NPO bill in place by no later than May so there's a tight timeline."
