NEWS

Frustration

Frustration was the order of the day on Tuesday as hundreds of people filled several commercial banks in Port of Spain waiting, some for hours, to exchange their old $100 bills for the new polymer notes. The Central Bank has said after December 31, old $100 bills in circulation will cease to be legal tender. Many people in the cashiers' lines, including the elderly, were seen clutching manila envelopes and bags close to their chests which presumably contained their $100 bills. Read more here

Criminals rush to clean dirty money

Mon­ey laun­der­ers, drug traf­fick­ers, gang­sters and oth­er un­der­world fig­ures are at­tempt­ing to ex­change their “dirty mon­ey” with the as­sis­tance of le­git­i­mate busi­ness­men by of­fer­ing them a fee to do the trans­ac­tion. This il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ty is be­ing con­firmed by high rank­ing law en­force­ment of­fi­cers and se­nior fi­nan­cial sources as the coun­try phas­es out the old $100 note to the new poly­mer note that will be­come le­gal ten­der on Jan­u­ary 1. “There is a re­al con­cern that busi­ness­men are ob­tain­ing il­lic­it funds and un­der­world fig­ures are will­ing to take a hit and are of­fer­ing these busi­ness­men $20 on every $100 to get the mon­ey in­to the sys­tem. This is some­thing we are ac­tive­ly mon­i­tor­ing,” said a high rank­ing law en­force­ment of­fi­cial in­volved in in­ves­ti­gat­ing white-col­lar crime and track­ing the move­ment of dirty mon­ey. Read more here

POLITICS

AG: Don’t fight over old $100 notes

Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi urged citizens not to squabble with businesses who refuse to take the existing $100 note in the run-up to their year-end voiding but rather to simply deposit the bills in their bank accounts and pay by credit or debit card. Speaking to reporters at the Senate yesterday, he said it is unsure if businesses can be compelled to accept the still-legal old notes now. “Why go through all of that? You have an alternative. Go to the bank. Put your money in.” Read more here

Al-Rawi: Weed bills to be passed by Christmas

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi yes­ter­day pro­ject­ed the suc­cess­ful pas­sage of pro­posed leg­is­la­tion to de­crim­i­nalise mar­i­jua­na which will be de­bat­ed in the Low­er House to­day. He told re­porters the bills on­ly re­quire a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty - Gov­ern­ment votes alone - for pas­sage. Al-Rawi al­so ex­pect­ed the bill would be de­bat­ed in the Sen­ate next week Tues­day. Af­ter the bills were laid in Par­lia­ment next month sev­er­al UNC of­fi­cials told Guardian Me­dia the bills have “se­ri­ous” is­sues and re­quire deep con­sid­er­a­tion. To­day’s de­bate will be on the Dan­ger­ous Drugs (Amend­ment) Bill 2019 and the Es­tab­lish­ment of the T&T Cannabis Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty 2019 which will es­tab­lish a Cannabis Con­trol Au­thor­i­ty - both laid in Par­lia­ment No­vem­ber 28. Bills pro­pos­e de­crim­i­nal­is­ing cer­tain quan­ti­ties of cannabis/cannabis resin. How­ev­er use will be pro­hib­it­ed in pub­lic spaces, all ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions and work­places. Per­sons will be able to law­ful­ly grow no more than four male cannabis plants at their res­i­dence with­out li­cence. Read more here

BUSINESS

RBL increases opening hours and Point of Sale limit

Re­pub­lic Bank has in­creased its Point of Sale (POS) lim­it from TT$7,500 to TT$10,000 as of yes­ter­day, Tues­day, De­cem­ber 10, 2019. The Bank is en­cour­ag­ing cus­tomers to make use of the POS fa­cil­i­ties and elec­tron­ic chan­nels to com­plete their trans­ac­tions as the switch to the new one hun­dred (TT$100) dol­lar bill takes ef­fect. In a state­ment, the bank said: “While the new notes are avail­able at all Branch­es, they will how­ev­er not be avail­able via the Blue Ma­chines (ABMs) as the Bank is present­ly work­ing with its ven­dors to re­cal­i­brate the ABMs to ac­cept the new notes.” Ad­di­tion­al­ly, in or­der to fa­cil­i­tate cus­tomers’ trans­ac­tions, the RBL has tem­porar­i­ly amend­ed its open­ing hours where all non-mall branch­es from Mon­day to Thurs­day will open from 8 am to 4 pm, while the hours for Fri­day are from 8 am to 5 pm RBL al­so notes that there will be no clo­sures on Fri­days dur­ing the 8 am to 5 pm hours. Read more here

Unipet stations up and running

UNIPET service stations are pumping gas again. The gas retailer said yesterday it was happy to have signed a settlement agreement to restore supplies from Paria Fuel Trading Company and hoped to complete negotiations for its annual supply by January 1, 2020. Read more here

Regional

Petrojam Attorney Challenges Mollison

An attorney for Petrojam has challenged a claim by former general manager of the state-owned oil refinery, Howard Mollison, that he was asked to provide company directors with information after he complained that a 2016 report to Parliament had falsely listed his salary as $15.3 million. Further, Mollison has acknowledged that his two-year contract with Petrojam indicated that one of the grounds on which it could be terminated was to facilitate the return of his predecessor, Winston Watson, who was on secondment with the refinery’s parent company, Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica. Read more here…

‘NOT OUR POSITION’

The Embassy of the United States of America has distanced itself from the remarks recently publicised of US State Department Adviser, Dr. Evan Ellis who spoke to the “likely return of the PPP to power” after the coming elections. Ellis had provided no statistics or hard data to support his claims and the statement was found to be personal sentiments of the author cited as “Ellis, 2019” at the end of the publication. Read more here…

International

Trump assaults facts to survive impeachmen

Donald Trump is looking to survive impeachment the same way he built his powerful presidency -- by assaulting facts and seeking to expand the limitations of the office he is accused of abusing. On the day that Democrats proposed two articles of impeachment against him, the President and his courtiers laid down a fresh fog to obscure the evidence that incriminates him. Read more here…

Myanmar Rohingya: Suu Kyi rejects genocide claims at UN court

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate responded to widespread claims that Myanmar (formerly Burma) committed atrocities against Muslim Rohingya. In her opening remarks, she called the case against Myanmar "incomplete and incorrect". She said troubles in Rakhine, where many Rohingya lived, go back centuries. Read more here…

11th December 2019

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