Government prosecutors have begun marshalling evidence in the trial involving the National Commercial Bank (NCB) which is accused of breaching the Money Laundering Act.
The trial started on Monday in the Half-Way-Tree Criminal Court.
Charges were laid against NCB last year that it allegedly breached the Act by failing to report the financial transactions of alleged drug kingpin Norris 'Deedo' Nembhard.
In a landmark move, the Financial Investigation Division (FID) of the Ministry of Finance served summonses on NCB in February last year concerning six threshold transactions.
The FID accused the bank of failing to report to the relevant authority, information on Deedo Nembhard's accounts.
The Act requires banks to report all cash transactions above US$50,000 to the FID.
NCB confirmed that the transactions occurred on Mr. Nembhard's accounts at one of its branches over a period of eight months in 2003.
However, in its defence NCB said when the transactions, totalling $US870,000, were discovered, it took disciplinary action against the employees involved.
The bank said it also filed the requisite reports based on information available at the time.
But investigators said the bank only filed the reports after they began probing the financial accounts of "Deedo" Nembhard and his family.
Government prosecutors intend to argue that NCB failed to report on multi-million dollar transactions of the accused drug kingpin during the "period specified" as outlined under the Act.
But NCB intends to argue that there is no set time line under the Act which requires the bank to report on the transactions, therefore they cannot be held liable.
The trial continues on September 8.
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