Proceeds of Crime workshops in the Eastern Caribbean

Training session in Antigua

British High Commission – Nov. 26 2010 – The British and Canadian High Commissions have jointly funded a series of Proceeds of Crime Workshops. This follows a highly successful eastern Caribbean Judicial conference held in December last year which targeted judges and magistrates.

The two day workshops commenced in Antigua in early November and were also held in Trinidad at the SAUTT training centre and Barbados at the Pommarine Hotel. Participants were magistrates and prosecutors drawn from a wide range of countries, including Antigua and Barbuda, St Kitts and Nevis, Dominica, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana.

The aim of the workshops was to help in the prevention and disruption of organized crime, including drug trafficking, money laundering and firearms offences. Participants reviewed a proposed prosecutorial code, which offers a way forward in harnessing ‘Best Practice’ for police and prosecutors in the fight against crime.

Mark Sutherland Williams, a UK barrister expert in Proceeds of Crime legislation and author of several publications on the subject, and Oliver Powell, also a UK Barrister, gave presentations and training modules on money laundering offences, cash seizures, confiscation and civil forfeiture.

From the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service, Dan Suter, currently Criminal Justice Adviser for the British Government in the Eastern Caribbean, also attended the Antigua and Barbados workshop presenting and facilitating working sessions on the proposed prosecutorial code.