Parliament has approved the Electronic Crimes (Amendment) Bill 2026, introducing significantly tougher penalties for individuals and companies that refuse to provide electronic information to law enforcement during criminal investigations. According to Antigua News Room, the legislation passed on Tuesday with bipartisan support.
Attorney General Sir Steadroy Benjamin, who piloted the bill in the House of Representatives, said the amendments are designed to address longstanding obstacles investigators face when seeking electronic records and data needed to solve crimes.
"The police would need evidence of pinging from telephones, different posts, et cetera, to get a trace of how crimes have been committed," Benjamin told lawmakers. "But the service providers are refusing to do so."
Under the amended legislation, a person who fails without reasonable excuse to comply with a production order within the specified time faces a fine of up to $100,000, imprisonment, or both upon summary conviction. On conviction on indictment, penalties rise sharply — up to a $1 million fine, imprisonment for up to seven years, or both.
Benjamin said the government was particularly concerned about telecommunications companies and other service providers whose local managers claimed they could not comply with production orders without authorisation from overseas headquarters.
"Some of their supervisors and managers are overseas," he said. "We have broadened this now. We are naming the managers who are here, the people in control of the company."
He argued that any company operating in Antigua and Barbuda must cooperate with lawful requests for information, rather than stall investigations by redirecting authorities to foreign-based executives.
Education Minister Daryll Matthew voiced strong support for the bill during Tuesday's debate, and disclosed that he had recently been targeted by a sophisticated financial crime.
"I fell victim to financial crime," Matthew told Parliament, noting that his bank is currently handling the matter. He congratulated the Attorney General and his team for bringing the amendments forward.
Support also came from the Opposition benches, with lawmakers agreeing that stronger provisions were necessary to ensure investigators can access the information required to prosecute crimes committed through electronic means.
One opposition member praised the government for moving to close gaps that had allowed some entities to withhold information from authorities.
"I think the government is doing quite an admirable thing in coming to the Parliament to ensure that information can be retrieved from them," the lawmaker said.
The amendments form part of the government's broader effort to strengthen Antigua and Barbuda's capacity to investigate cybercrime, financial fraud, and other offences that increasingly rely on digital communications and electronic records.
