More amendments coming to Global Forum Bill—AG

Senior Political Reporter

More amendments will be brought to the Parliament after the recent passage of the Miscellaneous Provisions (Global Forum) Bill, which tightens aspects of declarations that companies, trusts and non-profit entities have to make to the Government.

This was signalled by Attorney General Reginald Armour, who said the bill increases the requirements of how companies, trusts and NPOs account over their shareholders and other details.

“The ‘back-of-the-envelope’ approach to corporate administration must end,” Armour said in Tuesday’s Senate debate on the bill.

The bill is designed to get T&T off the European Union’s blacklist and the Global Forum’s non-compliant list on tax transparency and information exchange matters. It was passed in the Lower House last Friday and the Senate on Tuesday.

On Opposition concerns about “loopholes” in the bill, Armour said it was not so much about loopholes but the scope for refinement, as the evolving nature of financial crimes demanded that T&T remain adaptive and forward-thinking.

On the bill’s provisions on companies, Armour said the exercise with the bill served to highlight that the old approach of using “the back of an envelope” for corporate administration must end.

He noted the Global Forum and Financial Action Task Force frowned on dead corporate entities reposing in Registries and removing inactive companies would go a long way toward showing T&T’s bid to be compliant with both entities. Armour noted the bill empowered the Registrar General to strike delinquent companies off the Companies Register. This is being done with 63,000 companies.

Lyder: Govt running like headless chicken to comply with EU

However, Lyder asked, “Why T&T is still one of the dirty dozens on the EU’s blacklist? Government had the opportunity to deal with it since 2017, but only in the last 12 months, we see them run, skip and jumping like a headless chicken, bringing a slew of legislation because the pressure’s on them now.”

He said the Opposition was not given time to properly review the implications of the bill, which makes sweeping changes.

“Here we are with this sweeping set of changes yet we cannot even enact legislation already passed on certain aspects,” he said.

Lyder cited an OECD report published Monday on the 2024 Peer Review on tax exchange matters, which he said gave “damning” reviews of T&T’s tax information exchange framework directly to all the clauses in the bill.

He objected to any clause having the Finance Minister in the bill.

He said, “We don’t trust this Government. We saw Derek Chin’s information in the papers. Chinese Laundry ‘dirty laundry’ was in papers.

“You want us to trust the Minister? We cannot even account for $2.6 billion to the Auditor General.”