The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) and the Innovative Management and Professional Training put on the CPD Anti-money laundering Seminar on 27 November.

Chas Roy-Chowdhury, facilitator at the one-day seminar at the Westin Casuarina Resort in Grand Cayman, said the Cayman Islands and the rest of the Caribbean would be seriously impacted.

“They need be aware that there will be new rules if they haven’t been introduced already, which will have a direct, serious impact on the way they do business and report on potential suspicious activities of their clients,” he said.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) – the regulatory body, which oversees the rules of money laundering globally – have imposed new regulations to tighten the noose on the illegal trade.

Mr Roy-Chowdhury, the Head of Taxation of the ACCA, told Cayman Net News that close proximity to the United States and South America created a special problem for the region.

“In the Caribbean you have a special problem because you have got the vast US market for narcotics and you got the producers in South America and then you have the Caribbean islands in the middle, which can be used for filtering and laundering the money,” he said.

Speaking specifically about Cayman, he said: “I think in the Cayman Islands you have very solid financial institutions but clearly they can be infiltrated and used for crediting money.”

Mr Roy-Chowdhury said the problem is not unique to the Caribbean and that it was difficult to tell where the money launderers would surface.

“It’s very difficult to tell or understand where the problem is at any one time. People who operate organised crime try to launder their proceeds,” he said.

“There is never one jurisdiction, which they operate in - they go to where there is the weakest link.”

He added: “It depends on which jurisdiction they feel most comfortable in where they can get the money laundered. Clearly, anywhere there’s an opportunity of cleansing drug money then that jurisdiction will be used.”

Mr Roy-Chowdhury said the 15 participants were lectured on the new rules, ethics and professionalism, and reporting suspicious activities in their line of work.

“The objective is to let people know where they stand and their ethical and professional requirements, and guide them through how they might see where something needs to be done by them and whether they need to report something,” he said.

The participants were also taken through ethical guidelines from the ACCA – an international accounting body – that has 130 members in the Cayman Islands.

He said the attendees found the sessions very informative.

One session covered the topics: The nature of money laundering; Who is involved in the fight against money laundering? The role of the accountants; and the FATF recommendations.

Other topics dealt with were: ACCA guidance to members on money laundering; Audit assurance; Tax audits.

Before conducting the seminar in Grand Cayman, he carried out similar assignments in Jamaica where the main issue was weapons trading.

Mr Roy-Chowdhury left the Island on Tuesday for the Bahamas and Bermuda where he will be facilitating anti-money laundering seminars before returning to his base in the United Kingdom.

Esther Le Gendre, Head of ACCA Caribbean based in Trinidad, accompanied Mr Roy-Chowdhury to Cayman.