·      Radar on six incompliant financial businesses for money laundering

Some $1.27 billion have so been forfeited by the Financial Investigation Division (FID) of the Ministry of Finance.

Between January and October of this year, the FID concluded investigations into 17 asset recovery matters involving criminal benefits/assets with accumulated values of J$1.185 billion and just over US$182,000. This compares with 13 cases that were completed in 2020 with criminal assets/benefit amounting to J$303m and US$1.541 million. 

FID Principal Director, Keith Darien made the announcement at a press briefing last Friday October 29, which was recognized as National Anti-Money Laundering Day.

The day was celebrated under the theme: “Taking Action against money laundering.”

Darien noted that “annualized, there has been an increase of over 50% in the number of investigations concluded and an increase of approximately 130% in the value of criminal assets/benefit identified, which are subject to confiscation or forfeiture order.” Of the 17 cases completed thus far in 2021, eight involved persons convicted for drug trafficking offences and four for lotto scamming activities. 

The table below provides statistics re civil investigations over the 3 year period 2019-2021.

The FID has identified assets, including real estate, motor vehicles and bank accounts valued J$303.3m and about US$54,000 which it will pursue to satisfy the Formal Orders, as they are obtained from the court. Five orders were granted by the court in 2021 amounting to $33 million.  

Since the beginning of the year, the Division has restrained assets valued in excess of $334.5 million in furtherance of money laundering and asset recovery investigations as detailed below.

In regards to criminal investigations, as at Oct, 2021, 32 persons have been charged with over 230 counts of money laundering offences.  This represents a 28% increase when compared with the achievement of 25 for 2020. 

In furtherance of money laundering and asset forfeiture investigations, 79 investigative orders were served on commercial banks and other financial institutions in keeping with POCA and FID Act for the institutions to provide financial information on the subjects of our investigations.           

According to Darien, “the FID was able to achieve these results operating with about 2/3^rd of its capacity in its police and financial forensics units.  Plans are afoot to urgently recruit other police officers and forensic accountants to ensure there is adequate capacity to effectively investigate and prosecution money laundering offences and deprive criminals of their illicit wealth.”

Six financial businesses flagged for money laundering

In the meantime, the FID has flagged six institutions operating in the financial sector whose operations are under the radar for money laundering. These six unnamed institutions have been found to be incompliant with Jamaica’s Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and pose a serious risk for money laundering activities.

However, Darien was quick to point out there is generally a high level of compliance by financial institutions to the provisions of Proceeds of Crimes Act (POCA), which is Jamaica’s principal AML legislative framework. Currently, the compliance rate is in excess of 90%.

Turning to the issue of morale, the FID Principal Director emphasized that the organization is comprised of a team of professionals are highly trained, motivated and empowered to undertake the most complex, high impact financial crimes investigations.

In concluding he made the point that “for the division to remain effective, we encourage and welcome the cooperation of persons operating in the financial sector, other law enforcement bodies and all law abiding citizens in general.”