Bahamians have a unique opportunity to solve a major financial and ethical issue while fixing a broken legal system.<\/p>\n
A public session is being held on January 31 at 8:30am at UBS, East Bay Street. Bahamians interested in saving The Bahamas should attend.<\/p>\n
Corruption, fixing cases and unethical lawyers have long been a part of the Bahamian legal system.<\/p>\n
Attorneys in The Bahamas have used various non-disclosure laws to protect their financial crimes and their illegal collusion with known criminals.<\/p>\n
Only the rich and privileged have access to justice, everybody else is predjudiced against and denied justice in the dysfunctional courts of The Bahamas.<\/p>\n
Hiding behind professional privilege laws to engage in criminality is finally being addressed and the operations of lawyers needs to be more closely scrutinized.<\/p>\n
Non-disclosure privileges have for too long been used by Bahamian lawyers to facilitate crimes.<\/p>\n
With the advent of the new financial architecture at the turn of the new millennium, the regulation of professionals including lawyers was tightened slightly.<\/p>\n
Finally, there is hope on the horizon that the Bahamian legal system will get the overhaul it needs.<\/p>\n
Lawyers and attorneys launched a campaign way back in 2001, prompted by the Glinton-Esfakis case, to protect their money laundering and other criminal activities.<\/p>\n
More than a decade later, the criminal activiy has only gotten worse and it is destroying the very fabric of Bahamian society and the reputation of The Bahamas in the international community.<\/p>\n
As this matter is still sub judice, this commentary is not meant to discuss the merits of that case and should not be interpreted as such.<\/p>\n
However, there is a ready solution to the corruption in the legal profession.<\/p>\n
The solution is to have more scrutiny of lawyers and remove oversight from the Bar Association and give it to a panel of ordinary citizens whose morals and ethics are not compromised.<\/p>\n
Currently, the ethics committee of the Bar Association does very little to ensure that lawyers carry out their “know your client” (KYC) anti-money laundering responsibilities.<\/p>\n
Many Bahamian attorneys hide their criminal activities under the cloak of legal professional privilege.<\/p>\n
The Canadian government has discovered this and taken action to challenge legal professional privilege regarding anti-money laundering laws.<\/p>\n
The Canadianas have also implemented a no-cash rule on lawyers.\u00a0 As a result, lawyers cannot accept cash payments in excess of about C$7,500.<\/p>\n
That additional rule is terribly important, because lawyers in The Bahamas are often the conduit or mailbox for large sums of illicit money to enter into the financial system.<\/p>\n
Now, Bahamians have an opportunity to solve these long-vexing problems in the\u00a0 practice of law.<\/p>\n
The Arbitration and Investment Forum is being held on January 31 at 8:30am at UBS, East Bay Street. Space is limited.<\/p>\n
Secure your ticket today by contacting info@maynardlaw.com.<\/p>\n
By:\u00a0 Fed up with legal corruption<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bahamian lawyers hiding behind professional privilege laws to engage in criminality is finally being addressed and the operations of lawyers needs to be more closely scrutinized.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[93,31,49,123],"class_list":["post-30435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinions","tag-corruption","tag-crime","tag-law","tag-lawyers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30435\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}