Focus on trans-national crime in Caribbean

FORT-DE-FRANCE — Trans-national crime and its impact on the Caribbean region will be addressed at a four-day seminar which opened in the French Caribbean territory of Martinique yesterday.

Organised as a joint effort of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the Caribbean Community Secretariat, the December 9-12 seminar will focus on “Strengthening International Legal Cooperation in the Caribbean” with a special emphasis on “improving casework impact”.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime has explained that as the world becomes more global, so do its criminals.

“Borders,” it said, “are becoming less of a serious impediment from criminal activities as offenders use ever-improving methods of travel and communication to elude detection and conceal illicit profits and criminal evidence.

“And while borders have become less of a hindrance to today’s modern criminals,” added the UN agency, “these boundaries persist as obstacles to authorities that are attempting to prosecute crime.”

The organisers of the seminar hold the view that with an “effective plan for legal cooperation” among Caribbean nations, criminals hiding behind national borders will no longer be safe from extradition and prosecution, and their property will no longer be free from seizure.

Guyana crime needs ‘national solution’ — IMF official

GEORGETOWN — A ‘national solution’ is urgently required to deal with the escalating crime problems in Guyana, according to a visiting official of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Jorge Guzman.

He is in the country to review the implementation of measures to reduce poverty and commented on the implications of the harm being done by criminal activities, according to a report in yesterday’s Stabroek News.

Guzman’s comment on the need for a national solution to the crime wave has come as the government and parliamentary parties remain divided over the text of a draft joint anti-crime communiqué prepared by a three-member social partners group following separate discussions with them.

The IMF is providing some US$75 million in loans on concessionary terms from its Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility to support Guyana’s efforts to alleviate poverty within the framework of its national anti-poverty strategy.

Guyana is also a major beneficiary in the Caribbean of debt relief assistance from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), which last week announced a new US$64-million aid package for the country over a 10-year period.

The aid, a third of which is to be delivered as “interim relief” shortly, is being made available through the IDB’s enhanced debt relief aid for the “Highest Indebted Poor Countries” (HIPC).