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Sunday, April 6, 2025

DSS CEO claims JMMB business account closed

by

Anna-Lisa Paul
1618 days ago
20201031
Members of the public wait in line to register for DSS at Shepherd's Inn, Crown Point, Tobago, last weekend.

Members of the public wait in line to register for DSS at Shepherd's Inn, Crown Point, Tobago, last weekend.

VINDRA GOPAUL-BOODAN

Drugs Sou Sou (DSS) CEO Ker­ron Clarke has called for a boy­cott of JMMB, fol­low­ing no­ti­fi­ca­tion from the bank that they will no longer do busi­ness him.

Clarke was re­port­ed­ly in­struct­ed by the bank that his ac­count had been closed on Fri­day and he sub­se­quent­ly re­ceived a cheque for the amount with­in the ac­count.

Fol­low­ing this com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Clarke took to so­cial me­dia where he called on DSS sup­port­ers to with­draw their mon­ey from JMMB from Mon­day.

In a Face­book Live just be­fore mid­day on Sat­ur­day, Isha Wells, the own­er of an ad­ver­tis­ing agency and a ra­dio pre­sen­ter, ad­vised DSS sup­port­ers to main­tain or­der, as she said they had to be strate­gic at this time.

Ac­cus­ing the au­thor­i­ties of want­i­ng to shut down the DSS sys­tem and re­turn young black peo­ple to beg­ging for a ten days, Wells de­scribed it as a "fi­nan­cial move­ment" which had el­e­vat­ed the low­er stra­ta of so­ci­ety, which was now un­will­ing to be re­turned to that po­si­tion.

Re­fer­ring to Clarke as a sol­dier, busi­ness­man and fam­i­ly man who had no crim­i­nal his­to­ry, Wells ques­tioned where and how he was sup­posed to live now.

Call­ing out the Gov­ern­ment for its si­lence on the mat­ter, Wells de­mand­ed clar­i­ty from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and oth­er par­lia­men­tar­i­ans.

In a state­ment on Sat­ur­day, JMMB Chief Mar­ket­ing Of­fi­cer and Chief Re­tail Of­fi­cer Lisa Maria Alexan­der said the in­sti­tu­tion al­ways seeks "to en­sure that in­tegri­ty, eth­i­cal and reg­u­la­to­ry stan­dards gov­ern the man­age­ment of all our re­la­tion­ships with our clients."

While not di­rect­ly re­fer­ring to DSS, Alexan­der added, "We are clear too, that our man­age­ment of our bank­ing/fi­nan­cial ser­vices must be an in­di­ca­tor of our ac­count­abil­i­ty and oblig­a­tion to pro­tect­ing the in­ter­ests of all our clients and stake­hold­ers. At JMMB, your best in­ter­est is at the heart of all we do."

Dur­ing his so­cial me­dia state­ment, Clarke said DSS op­er­a­tions were now at a stand­still fol­low­ing a court or­der on Thurs­day which gave the po­lice au­thor­i­ty to hold for three months, an es­ti­mat­ed $7.77 mil­lion they seized from the DSS last week. How­ev­er, Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob told Guardian Me­dia that the amount seized dur­ing the raid last Tues­day was $6.4 mil­lion. The mon­ey was seized un­der the Pro­ceeds of Crimes Act.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith re­turned to T&T on Thurs­day to over­see the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Two of­fi­cers from the Roy­al Bar­ba­dos Po­lice Force are in the coun­try to as­sist with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and have been sworn in as a TTPS sergeant and su­per­in­ten­dent, while a third in­ves­ti­ga­tor from the Unit­ed King­dom ar­rived last week­end. The mat­ter in­volves the seizure of $22 mil­lion in cash which had been found in the house where DSS op­er­ates at Kath­leen Warn­er Dri­ve, La Hor­quet­ta, on Sep­tem­ber 22 and re­turned the fol­low­ing day.

An in­ves­ti­ga­tion was launched in­to that mat­ter and on Oc­to­ber 16, four po­lice of­fi­cers were sus­pend­ed and 10 oth­ers trans­ferred un­der or­ders from Grif­fith.

Drugs Sou Sou


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