Regulation of NGOs: Only in Venezuela?

Published at: 24/05/2024 06:00 PM

Non-Governmental Organizations ( NGOs) have become an invasion mechanism with the excuse of helping to alleviate welfare, service and social development problems in communities affected by the foreign exploitation of their resources. It is through these organizations that they manage to influence communities and thus unbalance the region.

According to the nature of their creation, NGOs are independent, non-profit organizations that arise as a result of civil and popular initiatives and are generally linked to social, cultural, development or other projects that generate structural changes in certain spaces, communities, regions or countries.

However, the National University of La Plata (Argentina) published, in its journal Scenarios, an article called “New forms of participation today: NGOs as a strategy” by researchers Agustín Zuccaro and Mariana Santín, in which they explain that they present themselves as a new form of participation that finds its social legitimacy in the media field: “It is the media that give visibility to these new actors and who promote the excessive value for managing the social conflict characteristic of any society. They are the mainstream media that state these forms of participation as valid, considering that they are those where politics loses its meaning (poverty, health, education and food)”.

The researchers add, that they are spaces where one avoids discussing the history of these problems in order to state that each subject is the architect of his destiny and in this sense the social and the collective are lost as a value, giving strength to the political project of capitalism.

Structures for the control of resources managed by NGOs

Once the functioning of these organizations has been reviewed, in several countries of the world and according to revised complaints, there are many cases where the interference of NGOs in the political structures of the nation in which they are located and which also serve to launder money and finance terrorist groups is evident. This is why national, regional and international institutions have been created to monitor the use of the resources provided for their operation.

Thus, we have the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) Egmont Group , which is an international entity that has 150 affiliated countries and is responsible for receiving reports from its members on suspicious money laundering operations provided by financial institutions and other entities, analyzing them and transmitting them both to the competent authorities and to the justice service, to FIUs from other countries the information on these operations, in order to combat and prevent any illegal activity.

As a global organization, it facilitates and promotes the exchange of information, knowledge and cooperation between the FIUs of the countries that comprise it. It provides a platform for securely exchanging knowledge and financial intelligence.

Venezuela belongs to the Egmont Group through the National Financial Intelligence Unit (UNIF), which processes and analyzes Suspicious Activity Reports (RAS) submitted by the various obligated entities designated by the Organic Law against Organized Crime and funding to terrorism, in order to disclose to the Public Prosecutor's Office and law enforcement authorities, information that may evidence possible punishable acts and the identification of their perpetrators, as well as the information they require to carry out their investigations.

In the same way, in the exercise of its functions, it will process and disclose strategic information useful to the national office against organized crime and terrorist financing, supervisory bodies and bodies and the fulfillment of the purposes of the State in general.

Thus, in order to ensure the good use of their resources and that they carry out activities associated with social assistance and development, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) presented for the first discussion in the National Assembly (AN) on January 24, 2023, the bill on oversight, regularization, action and financing of non-governmental and related organizations , which will reinforce the Venezuelan legal system in this area.

Our country is also a member of the Caribbean Financial Action Group (GAFIC), which is a regional organization of States and Territories in the Caribbean Basin that have agreed to implement common measures against money laundering and terrorist financing. Since September 2001, GAFIC has deepened its focus on regulating financial services and charitable organizations. To this end, he created Recommendation 8 in which he warned countries about the “particular vulnerability” of NGOs to be misused to raise, move funds or provide support to terrorist organizations. In addition, GAFIC encourages countries to implement supervisory and regulatory mechanisms with the clear objective of confronting illegal activities.

The intention, then, is to be able to monitor and monitor the use of foreign resources allocated to NGOs so that the precepts described in their objectives are truly fulfilled and, in this way, to eliminate the diversion of funds to be used both in destabilization activities and in terrorist actions within our country .

AMELYREN BASABE/Mazo News Team