Prime Minister Mia Mottley on Wednesday threw down the gauntlet to the United States Congress to better regulate banking relations and deal with the vexing issue of de-risking and blacklisting to prevent Caribbean nations becoming financial outcasts.She further cautioned that if urgent action was not taken, alternative ways to trade and transfer funds would be sought.“What we face is a situation that . . . the avoidance of terrorism financing, the avoidance of money laundering, on which we are all agreed, is likely to happen because you are driving people underground,” the Barbadian leader warned in historic testimony before the US House Committee on Financial Services during a hearing on When Banks Leave: The Impacts of De-risking on the Caribbean, and Strategies for Ensuring Financial Access.“We are here because we are fighting for a global public good and we are fighting for the human rights of our citizens.
