It is of­ten said the key to se­cur­ing your wealth is through in­vest­ment.

How­ev­er, last week the in­vest­ment bank­ing sec­tor in Ja­maica found it­self with ma­jor ques­tions to an­swer when news broke that the fastest man in his­to­ry Us­ain Bolt could not find US$12.7 mil­lion which had been in his ac­count at the Kingston-based pri­vate in­vest­ment firm Stocks and Se­cu­ri­ties Lim­it­ed.

Bolt had seem­ing­ly done the right thing to avoid the trap many suc­cess­ful ath­letes fall prey to fol­low­ing the end of their ca­reers, hold­ing on to a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of his wealth through in­vest­ment as op­posed to ex­haust­ing his wealth on a lav­ish lifestyle.

Yet de­spite by most con­ven­tions, do­ing the right thing, Bolt’s ac­count which once read US$12.8 mil­lion now re­port­ed­ly on­ly has US$12,000.

The de­ba­cle has raised con­cerns about the in­vest­ment mar­ket in Ja­maica, but it ap­pears that for the mo­ment there are no such con­cerns about the in­vest­ment mar­ket in this coun­try.

Tri­cia Kissoon, CEO of JMMB In­vest­ments said she does not be­lieve this oc­cur­rence has had any sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on the in­vest­ment mar­ket in T&T.

“I don’t see any im­me­di­ate con­cerns to the T&T in­vestor base, but I do think that clients would con­tin­ue to be se­lec­tive around the bro­kers that choose to do busi­ness with. Specif­i­cal­ly speak­ing with the re­cent cross-list­ing of Guardian Hold­ings Ltd and Massy en­ti­ties in Ja­maica, clients showed an in­ter­est in cross bor­der trad­ing and this sit­u­a­tion would en­sure they are in­vest­ing via the right part­ner,” said Kissoon in re­sponse to ques­tions posed to her by the Busi­ness Guardian.

She said while some clients did ex­press con­cern about the Ja­maican mar­ket, the main fo­cus of JMMB’s clients is on oth­er press­ing mat­ters such as the on­go­ing con­ver­sion of the Cli­co In­vest­ment fund, which was of­fi­cial­ly ter­mi­nat­ed on Jan­u­ary 2.

“At this time clients have shared no re­al con­cern about the T&T mar­ket but they are gen­er­al­ly fo­cused on the Cli­co In­vest­ment Fund (CIF) con­ver­sion. That be­ing said on­ly a few clients did share their con­cern for the Ja­maican mar­ket and the pos­si­ble in­vestor sen­ti­ment set­back from this sit­u­a­tion,” Kissoon said.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­ports com­ing out of Ja­maica, Bolt’s mis­for­tune ap­peared to be a re­sult of fraud­u­lent ac­tiv­i­ty be­ing per­pe­trat­ed by an em­ploy­ee at the in­vest­ment firm.

It has been re­port­ed that for close to a decade, an em­ploy­ee at the firm had been si­phon­ing funds from var­i­ous clients’ ac­counts.

The em­ploy­ee re­port­ed­ly would some­times use a le­git­i­mate client re­quest for funds but would sub­mit a re­quest for a high­er sum, pock­et­ing the ex­cess while pay­ing clients what they ini­tial­ly re­quest. The em­ploy­ee al­so re­port­ed­ly would forge such re­quests to ac­quire funds with­out the client’s knowl­edge.

A crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the pri­vate in­vest­ment firm in Ja­maica has been launched, al­though this ac­tion has not spared the Ja­maican gov­ern­ment from crit­i­cism over its han­dling of the case.

The scan­dal, re­ports stat­ed lead to Ever­ton Mc­Far­lane, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Ja­maica’s Fi­nan­cial Ser­vices Com­mis­sion, to go on leave last Fri­day.

It was re­port­ed that he will of­fi­cial­ly step down on Jan­u­ary 31 with an of­fi­cial with Bank of Ja­maica set to take his place as the in­ves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ues in­to Stocks and Se­cu­ri­ties Lim­it­ed.

Ja­maica’s Fi­nan­cial Ser­vices Com­mis­sion reg­u­lates fi­nan­cial com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing Stocks and Se­cu­ri­ties Ltd.

Ja­maican au­thor­i­ties still have not said ex­act­ly how much mon­ey over­all is miss­ing.

Ja­maica’s Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Nigel Clarke has stat­ed that there will be full trans­paren­cy with re­gard to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Kissoon how­ev­er said JMMB would con­tin­ue to fol­low the rules and reg­u­la­tions which are meant to pro­tect their clients.

“At JMMB we have our clients’ best in­ter­est at heart al­ways. We op­er­ate with strict pro­ce­dures and process­es around trans­ac­tions and re­port­ing, which is then sup­port­ed with in­ter­nal checks and bal­ances by risk, com­pli­ance and in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal au­di­tors. Apart from this, our lo­cal reg­u­la­tors, The T&T Se­cu­ri­ties Ex­change Com­mis­sion and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change, re­quire us to re­port in­to them based on laws and rules that gov­ern over the mar­ket.

“Over­ar­ch­ing all of this is ac­count­abil­i­ty at our board and board sub-com­mit­tees,” Kissoon said.

She felt at this time the guide­lines that are in place in T&T are suf­fi­cient to pro­tect clients and po­ten­tial in­vestors in the fu­ture.

“The ex­ist­ing reg­u­la­tors’ mea­sures are in place to pro­tect the in­vest­ing com­mu­ni­ty. For us at JMMB there’s an en­hanced ap­proach to cor­po­rate gov­er­nance, for in­stance, our in­ter­nal com­mit­tee in­de­pen­dent­ly opines over all our in­vest­ment rec­om­men­da­tions be­fore it is made pub­lic. The com­mit­tee is sup­port­ed with in­puts from var­i­ous de­part­ments such as risk and trea­sury.

“Al­so, it is im­por­tant for all Fi­nan­cial en­ti­ties to share from a trans­par­ent place to sup­port the build­ing of trust with­in the in­vest­ing com­mu­ni­ty. I would al­so rec­om­mend that clients do their own re­search when choos­ing an in­vest­ment part­ner,” said Kissoon.

The Busi­ness Guardian al­so reached out to the T&T Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion for their views on the in­ci­dent as well as ask­ing if there were enough safe­guards in place to pre­vent such an oc­cur­rence.

How­ev­er, up to press time, the TTSEC had not sent a re­sponse to our queries.