Caribbean financial centres sign on to anti-corruption convention
Friday September 16 2011 | 08:38 AM

Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Grenada, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago have become the latest Caribbean countries to agree to on-site visits to evaluate their compliance with the Inter-American Convention against Corruption.

They now join a number of offshore Caribbean territories who have notified their consent to receive on-site visits by the Mechanism for Follow-Up on the Implementation of the Inter-American Convention against Corruption (MESICIC), an inter-governmental body established within the framework of the Organisation of American States (OAS).

On September 9, Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Grenada, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago, communicated to the OAS their consent to be investigated by the Technical Secretariat of the MESICIC.

Consequently, this brings the number of territories that have consented to MESICIC visits to 26, the others including: Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saint Kitts and Nevis, the United States and Uruguay.

According to the body, MESICIC supports member states in the implementation of the provisions of the Convention through a process of reciprocal evaluation. In this mechanism, recommendations are formulated with respect to those areas in which there are legal gaps or where further progress is necessary.