In its March 2017 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, the US State Department classified 14 of the 15 CARICOM states as major money laundering countries, Belize included.
A Caribbean news report states that one of the consequences of this blacklisting, is further fallout from correspondent banks, who will be increasingly unwilling to partner with indigenous banks.
For Belize, which has been hard hit by the correspondent bank crisis, it's more bad news. But on Friday, the Prime Minister said that the local banks are getting by through relations with smaller correspondent banks.
Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow- Prime Minister
"It is still a little precarious in the sense that you would want 3 or 4 or 5; but what a huge advance from the days when the biggest bank in the country- the Belize Bank- was scrambling without even so much as one correspondent bank abroad. So we are making progress, we have made progress, and I don't see any chance, realistically, of any slippage any time soon. My sense is that, while they will never be completely satisfied, there is no chance of financial action task force, Caribbean Financial Action Task Force, the EU, any of those persons or any of those agencies doing anything to Belize."
Email
Print