Trinidad and To­ba­go is now plac­ing greater em­pha­sis on fi­nan­cial over­sight, bor­der con­trols and in­ter-agency co­op­er­a­tion as part of it counter-ter­ror­ism strat­e­gy, as Gov­ern­ment moves to im­ple­ment the 2025 Na­tion­al Coun­tert­er­ror­ism Strat­e­gy.

This as the sec­ond meet­ing of the In­ter-Min­is­te­r­i­al Com­mit­tee for Counter-Ter­ror­ism (IM­C­CT) yes­ter­day ex­am­ined the role of var­i­ous min­istries in the na­tion­al strat­e­gy, where Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo said fi­nan­cial sys­tems are cen­tral to ef­forts to dis­rupt ter­ror­ist fi­nanc­ing and or­gan­ised crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to re­leas­es from the Min­istries of Fi­nance and De­fence, Tan­coo said mod­ern ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tions and transna­tion­al crim­i­nal net­works re­ly on fi­nanc­ing, in­ter­na­tion­al trade and tech­nol­o­gy to op­er­ate, mak­ing the de­tec­tion and dis­rup­tion of il­lic­it fi­nan­cial ac­tiv­i­ty a key com­po­nent of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.