As we have often commented in this discussion, I know little about the details of law. I have been trained in money laundering a financial adviser specifically when it involves tax evasion. I appreciate I may be misguided as UK law may well be different than T&T & US laws. But this is my understanding:
Money laundering is the practice of disguising the origins of illegally-obtained money. Ultimately, it is the process by which the proceeds of crime are made to appear legitimate. The money involved can be generated by any number of criminal acts, including drug dealing, corruption, accounting and other types of fraud, and tax evasion.
Police in the UK, at least, use this legislation to investigate various types of financial crimes, including tax evasion. The original legislation referred purely to drug trafficking and the oroceeds of crime. (In fact it is believed the term "money laundering" was introduced after the sentencing of Al Capone, who used dry cleaning stores as a way of, literally, laundering his money). Although Police may not suspect the suspect of drugs or other organised crime, they can use the legislation if they suspect a financial crime has taken place.
Salt Lake City Olympic bribe scandal.
The international sports community was rocked by a bribery scandal involving the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah. Two officials of the Utah committee that secured the games were indicted in 2000 on charges of wire and Mail Fraud, conspiracy, and interstate travel in aid of Racketeering. They were charged with paying an official of the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) to help influence the selection of Salt Lake City by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The USOC official who received the bribes later pleaded guilty to several criminal charges including the accepting of a bribe.
Federal prosecutors contended that the two officials had paid $1 million to influence votes of several IOC members. In addition, they had allegedly diverted some $130,000 of the bid committee's income, and had altered books and created false contracts to conceal their actions. The two officials denied that they had done anything wrong, contending that the payments were intended as grants and scholarships for poor athletes. Following the indictments, ten members of the IOC either resigned or were expelled from the organization, and many reforms were undertaken to prevent bribery. The USOC also authorized an independent review of its practices.
However, the two Utah officials successfully challenged the bribery charges. In July 2001, a federal judge dismissed the bribery charges, finding that a Utah bribery statute could not be applied to the defendants' actions. In December 2001, the judge dismissed the remaining criminal counts.
Non declaration of funds in T&T
The penalty for the filing of a false declaration under the Customs Act is a fine of three times the value of the item not so declared or a term of imprisonment of eight years.
In January 2008 David Cameron, Leader of the Conservative Party, announced that he would, if elected, seek to return stop and search powers to the police. Under Conservative proposals, police sergeants would be able to authorise the use of stop and search of pedestrians and vehicles in a specific area for up to six hours—or 48 hours if permission is granted by a senior officer.
Not sure if this actually came back into law. Very emotive subject as in the 80's, the so-called "sus law" was abused by police to target black and ethnic minority groups, exactly the type of civil rights abuse you referred to. Funnily enough, I nearly got arrested under the sus law when I attended a protest march against the sus law in Trafalgar Square in 1983! Police were just picking people out of the crowd, mainly black guys, and when we tried to intervene, all these cops with batons and shields came at us and threatened to arrest us on suspicion of starting a riot or some such nonsense.
Abused as it was, I feel the ability of police to arrest someone on suspicion of a crime is essential. Imagine the police are informed that someone is going to shoot one of your family, and that he has an unlicenced gun in his car outside their house. You wouldn't want the police to search the car? Again, it may be annoying, but if you've done no wrong, whats the problem? Every December in UK , 10's of thousands of motorists are stopped for no reason to be breathalysed. I've probably been stopped around 15 times. Personally, I am grateful they do this.
So, again. I will accept that I may be mistaken, and that T&T police, inland revenue, customs may not have the above laws or enough suspicion to act. I will also accept that my interpretation of the laws are misguided. But I understand the law to be a living entity that evolves due to new decisions which become precedents and can be used to support legal arguments.
All I ever suggested, right at the beginning of this debate is that there is enough smoke to at least talk to Warner and make a judgement whether a law has been broken.
