PINDER: WE’LL BE OFF EU BLACKLIST IN NOVEMBER

By EARYEL BOWLEG Tribune Staff Reporter ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

ATTORNEY General

Ryan Pinder said The Bahamas would be removed from the European Union’s blacklist in November. In the Senate yesterday, he supported Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis’ remark that the criteria to blacklist the country was “unfairly applied to us”.

“As we know, the financial services industry is an industry that is highly competitive where our competitors are always looking for an advantage over us, where the goalposts move on a continual basis,” Mr Pinder said.

“It is an industry where we have foreign governments and multilateral institutions doing what they can to discredit our jurisdiction and to cause for what I call inequitable determinations, blacklists, and other opinions that they may have about us even though we are a country who achieves greater things than them, who has better compliance regimes than them, and who have better innovation than them.”

“The prime minister also was able to give a convincing argument on how the activities of countries and multilateral organisations like the European Union through their discriminatory treatment of countries like The Bahamas in financial services matters has a direct adverse implication on the climate crisis affects on small island developing states.”

Mr Pinder said the country cannot recover and rebuild in the face of the climate crisis if the European Union’s penalties affect the basic “tenants of reinsurance and insurance” in this

Death priority areas, including security, governance, the electoral process, and long-term development planning and advocacy. They will also liaise with key international partners and agencies,” CARICOM said in a statement.

Yesterday, Mr Christie said the matter is complex.

“It’s difficult and has to be understood that we have been invited by CARICOM to assist the Haitian stakeholders towards making decisions that will secure the country and provide a path to elections, and once you are able to do that then you are then moving towards the democratisation of Haiti that everyone is waiting for,” he said.

He expressed concern about the prevalence of violence and gangs in the community.

He said meetings are expected to resume today.