Herstelling money laundering matter should also rope in the other participants

DEAREDITOR,

I’d like to commend the Special Organised Crime Unit’s (SOCU) recent success on the arrest of the alleged Herstelling money laundering family syndicate published by various media entities on February 9 2023. Thissuccesswasmostlikely achievedwiththehelpofthe Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) which is responsible for processing Suspicious TransactionReports(STRs), although they did not much get much credit from the press The staggering GY$4.1Binlaunderedfunds does cause me to ask two simplequestions.

Firstly, what plans for criminalassetrecoverydoes SOCU have in place?

Criminalprosecutiongoesas far as to punish culprits and uphold the law so that an example is made out of the Herstelling family for other Guyanese. Asset recovery would be a welcome gift to the public coffers and show that SOCU is a net gain for thetaxpayerdime.TheUK’s Serious Fraud Office

DEAREDITOR,

The name of Dhanpaul Narine’s recently published book may not sit well for some, but for me, being not one to jump to conclusions without gathering more, pertinent information, the name piqued my interest; and based on what I read on Amazon com, I came to some understanding about whatmayhaveledtheauthor to choose such a name. Set inthevillageofVergenoegen on the east bank of the Essequibo, Guyana’s largest river, a short distance from where the river meets with theAtlanticOcean,thebook depicts life in the shanty surroundings of Sookoo Yard, a collection of ramshackle and cramped living quarters, made out of discarded lumber, plastic, tins, and corrugated zinc sheets, with flooring made simply of the good old natural ground of Mother Earth.Itchroniclesthelifeof itsprotagonist,Raj,fromhis infancy to teenage days, in the squalid surroundings of their ‘complex’ of primitive dwellings called logies, owned and operated by an unscrupulous landlord n a m e d S o o k o o –unscrupulous,becauseofhis penchant to resort to essentially pays for its own operations through recovered assets and court fines In future, it is importantforjournalistsand the public to ask questions about asset recovery to encourage this element of financialcrimeprevention.A money laundering report is incomplete without this crucialfactor Forillustrative purposes, GYD$4 1B is nearly as much as the entire budget allocation for Sport ($4.3B)in2023.

In other words, a full asset recovery or court fine, could just about triple current pensions (i.e. appx. GYD $2 1B of current government expenditure on pensions (budget speech data) + GYD $4.1B in asset recovery of laundered funds = GYD$6.2B or triple the expenditureforpensions)for oneyear Nottomentionthat the court fines could well exceed the GYD$4.1B in laundered funds if we prosecute the companies behindthesecrimes.

This brings me to my second question. What are the arrangements being made to prosecute these businesses? It takes two to tango and the other half of the coin is the Chinese businesses that were using this family to launder their money Given the significanceoftheamount,I dare posit that it is perhaps moreinthepublicinterestto prosecute the foreign businesses responsible and not just the private citizens.

If you have seen ‘The Ozarks’ (a popular Netflix show about money laundering) then you would know that American law enforcement habitually cuts deals to obtain useful information to bring down the bigger fish. I wonder what this case could have achieved if SOCU had offered the family a reduced sentence in return for their cooperation to incriminate the businesses they were workingfor

This case provides a golden opportunity for Guyana to showcase the excellence of itsAML(antimoneylaundering)regimeto avoidanyfutureblacklisting from CFATF (Caribbean Financial Action Task Force). I do hope that the authorities have recognised the opportunity to make a request for mutual legal assistance to the Chinese embassy in accordance with FATF(FinancialActionTask Force) Recommendation 37 so that we can recover the proceeds of crime and bring the22culpablecompaniesin China to account Unfortunately, I’m sure that even the layman might describe this international standard for fighting financialcrimetobewishful thinking given political interests and the likelihood that nation state’s would rather protect their domestic companies. Nonetheless, we shouldbeseentobeworking toward a golden standard in Anti-MoneyLaundering. SOCU at the very least appears to be turning the gearsintherightdirection.I wish our investigators every success.

YoursFaithfully,

OthnielLewis

draconian measures to punish any tenant for even simple ‘infractions.’ Raj, in hisinfancy,wasentrustedby his teenage, immature, and financially strapped parents, to the care of his grandmother, whom he lovingly called Ma throughoutthebook,andhis grandfather, Johnny, a confectionery salesman mostlyawayfromhome.

Perhapsthemoststriking quality of the book is its authenticity The author boldly, with a no-holdsbarred approach, portrays the miserable quality of life logie folks had to endure, with constant flooding both from rainfall and overflowing streams covering the earthen floors, and raw sewage floating around in the living and eating quarters of the units; with a stench that would linger around long after the water has receded, giving rise to the residents being referredtoas‘sh*ttypeople,’ hence the title; and with a slumlordwhoseonlypriority was collecting the weekly rent,andwhowouldresortto unorthodox, if not illegal meanstopenalizeanytenant fallingshortofthefullrent.

Raj’s dear Ma may have been illiterate, but she exuded a wealth of virtues, including patience and her constant mentoring of her grandson to always live by, and not veer away from, the truth;andherdailyadviceon howtorespectothersdespite their shortcomings, some directed and sometimes causing physical harm to Raj. Also, because of abject poverty, Raj had no textbooks in school, not to mentionhisconstantlysoiled clothing and lack of footwear; and he had to resort to sharing books with his desk companions, often ‘bribing’ them with sweets made by his grandpa. Also, Ma would go to a nearby storeandgetoldnewspapers from the proprietor before the papers were thrown out and the newspapers would servethedualpurpose,when pasted on the logie walls, of covering holes punched by their inquisitive, peepingtom neighbors, and giving Raj material, in the form of the new ‘wallpaper’, to improve his reading skills andbringhimuptoparwith domestic and world affairs. On the educational front, Raj’s performance in school did not reflect his true abilities, his mind preoccupied with myriad issues,nottheleastofwhich washisdedicationtohelpin finding food for the household, and his penchant to take risks by skipping classestofishbytheseaside to raise funds not otherwise availabletothefamily Notat liberty to give away too muchinthisessay,letmesay that the book, written in the first person, is largely based on the personal experiences of its author, Dr Dhanpaul Narine, a graduate of the University of Guyana (BA) and the London School of Economics(BScHons,MSc, MPhil, Phd) It certainly gives new meaning to the maxim, per ardua ad astra (through adversity to the stars). Its absorbing prose is interspersedwithmemorable colloquialisms, such as chulchul, chunkay, bunjal curry,bisibisibush,pookney, and mocomoco bush, to nameafew;andthis,plusthe unique subject matter, grabs the reader’s attention to go onandon.Imaynotbequite afastreader,butIwasableto coast through the book in recordtime,formeatleast!

IapplaudDr Narinefora fine piece of literature and highly recommend this first novelofhistoall,especially myfellowGuyanese.

Yourstruly, AbelPeters