NASSAU, Bahamas – The Bahamas government says it is examining new initiatives as it seeks to honor obligations made to the European Union in order for the country to be considered for removal from the EU’s list of non-cooperative jurisdictions in October.
Attorney General, Ryan Pinder“Being on the EU non-cooperative list has to do with the economic substance regime of The Bahamas. And there were really three aspects on why we were on the non-cooperative list,” said Attorney General Ryan Pinder.
“The first one would be the legislation, and updating the legislation to make sure we were complying with international best practices. The second component was the reporting portal was ineffective… that was the one that was put in place through the Department of Inland Revenue.
“And the third component was we needed to show that we were actually enforcing the laws, doing on site inspections, seeing if everybody was complying, who should be complying,” Pinder told reporters.
The EU is set to reevaluate this country’s substance reporting regime, to ensure it is in line with international best practices and Pinder said hopefully that by next month, the country should have all of the deficiencies outlined by the EU rectified.
“With respect to all of that, you would know we passed the Commercial Entities (Substance Requirements) Act, CESRA, in the final session, and that’s been signed, and then there’ll be an appointed day notice for September, which is the end of the reporting period.
“We have also engaged BDO (BDO Global), who did the BOSS [beneficial ownership secure search] reporting system for beneficial ownership, to build a purpose built economic substance reporting portal. That has already been demoed by industry.”
The Attorney General said training sessions for that portal will begin this week, with the full launch of the portal taking place during the first week of September.
He told reporters that the Ministry of Finance has done onsite inspections to ensure financial institutions and others that deal with economic substance reporting, are in full compliance with the requisite financial services bills required by the EU.
Pinder said during those inspections they have found some firms to be non-compliant.
“They’ve actually issued fines and asked for remediation on those [non-compliant] aspects.
“So those onsite inspections are underway, and they have about 35 more slated to start in September. We’re meeting all the expectations that were laid out for us.”
Pinder said the EU visit for a reassessment of this country’s compliance will likely come in October.
