As the Government of the Virgin Islands moves forward with plans to implement a Non-Profit Organisations Act, Opposition Leader Julian Fraser has raised some questions surrounding the distinction of nonprofit organisations from the major corporations which fall within the Financial Services Sector.
The Bill in question makes allowances for better supervision and monitoring of the operation of Non-Profit organisations which are registered in the BVI, with the intention of protecting them from potential exposure and abuse by terrorist networks.
Citing that certain aspects of the bill are erringly similar to the processes used to monitor the financial services sector, Fraser asked if the only differentiation between the two was the amount of money coming in.
“I’m wondering if a bill being referred to as Non-Profit Organisations and its talking now about staff training for money laundering terrorists, terrorism financing, a lot of criminal financing activities. What’s the difference between these non-profit organisations and the major corporations that are under Financial Services? Is the volume of money? That must be the only thing because they seem to be monitored for the same nefarious activities”, he said.
Should this be the case however, he noted that it was a flawed model. Fraser said that in many observable cases across the developed world, non-profit organisations have been able to scale massively. The opposition leader also begged the question of what types of organisations would qualify as non-profits under the act.
“I know in the real world, which is the larger countries, these non-profits can get huge, but then at the same time the BVI is a part of the real world where international organisations do register or international companies register here in the Virgin Islands. I don’t know if that holds true for non-profit organisations. Can TD Jakes register his church here as a non-profit? I’m not sure. If that’s the case. There are some churches and other organisations that do roll over some big dollars, so I hope that the minister and his team could give us a little insight on what these organisations really are”, he said.
To this end, Fraser argued that it may be of interest for the Government to reassess with which body the responsibility for authorising nonprofit organisations should lie.
He asked the house, “isn’t it necessary for us to do a reassessment of where this authorization, the authority for non-profit organisations lies? Should it still be with the Ministry? … The reason I’m asking that question is whether or not the ministry will be then equipped with the resources to deal with the registration of organisations that are capable or are being suspected of or has the potential to get involved in these kind of activities?”.