The top leader of Antigua and Barbuda has delivered a stark ultimatum to the country’s leading anti-narcotics and anti-financial crime agency: fix persistent performance failures or be dissolved entirely. Prime Minister Gaston Browne publicly levied the warning directly to Lieutenant Colonel Edward Croft, the sitting director of the Office of National Drug and Money Laundering Control Policy (ONDCP), during a high-stake gathering with the heads of all national law enforcement and security bodies.
In blunt remarks to the agency’s leadership, Browne questioned the ONDCP’s ongoing public value, arguing that the once-critical watchdog is at risk of slipping into complete irrelevance for the people of the dual-island nation. “As far as I’m concerned, ONDCP in particular is becoming an irrelevant institution, and you now need to show your relevance to the people of Antigua and Barbuda,” the prime minister stated.
Beyond the broad criticism of institutional underperformance, Browne called out a widely reported irregular working arrangement that sees ONDCP staff operate on a half-day schedule, a structure he labeled fundamentally incompatible with the demands of frontline law enforcement work. “Your team at ONDCP, they need to step up,” Browne said. “This idea that they’re working half a day, that is totally inappropriate for a law-enforcement entity.”
Closing his remarks to Croft, the prime minister reaffirmed the gravity of the ultimatum, making clear that dissolution is on the table if sweeping changes are not delivered quickly: “If you do not get your act together, I’m going to disband the ONDCP.”
First established under the ONDCP Act of 2003, the agency holds a critical dual mandate for the Caribbean nation. It functions as Antigua and Barbuda’s official national Financial Intelligence Unit, tasked with investigating a wide range of high-risk illicit activity, including transnational drug trafficking, money laundering, large-scale corporate and government fraud, and terrorist financing. It also plays a core regulatory role, collecting and analyzing suspicious activity reports from licensed financial institutions across the country and monitoring sector compliance with international and domestic anti-money laundering and counterterrorism financing rules.