Langston R.M. Sibblies, KC, JP

Director

Mr. Sibblies is a senior lawyer with extensive background in financial regulatory laws and on international standards on anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing. He also has substantial experience in administrative law and policy development.

First called to the Bar in 1975 in Jamaica, Mr. Sibblies has practiced law and worked in several jurisdictions, regionally and in Ontario, Canada. He was also called to Bar in Grenada (1983), Ontario, Canada (1990), the British Virgin Islands (1997) and the Cayman Islands (1999) and was later appointed Queen’s Counsel in the Cayman Islands in 2009. Mr. Sibblies holds Cayman Islands status by descent through his maternal relatives and is a citizen of Jamaica, Canada and the United Kingdom (UK).

He joined the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (CIMA) in 2000 as its first full-time Legal Adviser and was subsequently appointed General Counsel – Deputy Managing Director in 2008. He retired from that position in 2019. Immediately prior to joining CIMA, Mr. Sibblies served as the Executive Director of the Secretariat in the Cayman Islands Ministry of Finance dealing with various international initiatives impacting the Cayman Islands. In that capacity and subsequently as CIMA’s General Counsel, he represented the Cayman Islands and CIMA in various high-level meetings with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, International Monetary Fund, Financial Stability Board, International Organization of Securities Commissions, Caribbean Financial Action Task Force and Financial Action Task Force (FATF). He has delivered varying comprehensive papers relating to the regulation of the Cayman Islands financial industry at several local and international fora.

During his tenure with CIMA, Mr. Sibblies was engaged in the negotiation of several memoranda of understandings with leading financial regulators in the USA, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Japan and China, among others. He also served as a member of the Cayman Islands Tax Information Exchange Negotiation Team when he was involved in the negotiation of several Tax Information Exchange Agreements with other countries. In this capacity, he attended meetings of the Global Forum on Tax Transparency in Paris and Mexico on behalf of the Cayman Islands Government. On his retirement as General Counsel-Deputy Managing Director in 2019, Mr. Sibblies served as a consultant to CIMA on the development of responses to the FATF’s International Cooperation Review Group in relation to the CFATF’s 4th Round Mutual Evaluation Report on the Cayman Islands.

Mr. Sibblies also served as a member and Chairman of the Cayman Islands Law Reform Commission (2006 – 2011), Chairman of the Refugee Protection Appeals Tribunal (2022-23), Deputy Chairman of the Financial Services Commission (FSC) of Jamaica from September 2021 to July 2022, and as a member of the Cayman Islands Judicial and legal Service December 2023.  He has recently provided consultancy services related to the establishment of the Legal Services Supervisory Authority (LSSA), the AML/CFT Supervisory Authority for Cayman Islands Lawyers.

In addition to his membership on the Board of CIMA, Mr. Sibblies is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Cayman Islands National Insurance Company (CINICO) and is listed on the roster of short-term legal experts with the Legal Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and as an arbitrator-mediator with the Cayman International Mediation and Arbitration Centre (CI-MAC). He offers consultancy Services with an emphasis on the areas of financial regulation and AML/CFT compliance.

Mr. Sibblies is the author of a recent book entitled “The Regulation of the Financial Industry in the Cayman Islands – From Offshore Financial Centre to International Financial Centre”.