The Ja­maica gov­ern­ment Mon­day an­nounced that the Unit­ed States’ Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion (FBI) will as­sist lo­cal au­thor­i­ties in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the al­leged mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar fraud at in­vest­ment firm, Stocks and Se­cu­ri­ties Lim­it­ed (SSL).

“No stone will be left un­turned,” Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dr Nigel Clarke told a news con­fer­ence as he de­liv­ered a spe­cial pol­i­cy ad­dress on reg­u­la­tion of the fi­nan­cial sec­tor in re­sponse to the scan­dal that has rocked the na­tion.

“The in­ves­tiga­tive au­thor­i­ties have full op­er­a­tional in­de­pen­dence and will pur­sue the facts wher­ev­er they may lead. They will un­earth ex­act­ly how funds were al­leged­ly stolen, who ben­e­fit­ed from such theft and who or­gan­ised and col­lab­o­rat­ed in this.”

Clarke said that the probe will al­so seek to iden­ti­fy whether as­sets have been ac­quired lo­cal­ly or over­seas with the pro­ceeds of the al­leged fraud and that if and when such as­sets are iden­ti­fied, “all le­gal steps will be tak­en to re­strain these as­sets with the in­ten­tion of full for­fei­ture”.

Last week, Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness, said no ef­fort will be spared in un­cov­er­ing the full ex­tent of the fraud at the SSL, whose clients in­clud­ed in­clud­ing eight-time Olympic cham­pi­on Us­ain Bolt.

The leg­endary world class sprint­er is al­leged­ly to have been fleeced of mil­lions of dol­lars in lo­cal and for­eign cur­ren­cies giv­en to the firm to in­vest.

Bolt has in­di­cat­ed through his lawyer that he had a bal­ance of US$12.7 mil­lion at SSL as at Oc­to­ber 31, 2022, but that fig­ure de­clined to US$12,000 on Jan­u­ary 11.

The Ja­maica Glean­er news­pa­per has re­port­ed that at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing Bolt want SSL to re­turn the track star’s in­vest­ments “in record time, or face a huge law­suit”.

Hol­ness, who in­di­cat­ed that he was briefed on the mat­ter, said he is con­cerned and sym­pa­thet­ic to the hard-work­ing Ja­maicans who are un­cer­tain of the sta­tus of their funds in­vest­ed with SSL.

He not­ed that while every in­vestor’s dis­tress must be equal­ly ac­knowl­edged, “there is a di­men­sion of a height­ened pub­lic sense of be­tray­al, which I share, that a Na­tion­al Icon who has brought so much pride to all of us, is al­so a vic­tim of the al­leged fraud”.

“The pub­lic can rest as­sured that the Gov­ern­ment will be proac­tive in en­sur­ing that there is ac­count­abil­i­ty and pro­bity in the ex­er­cise of pub­lic func­tions, and that our pol­i­cy and ad­min­is­tra­tive re­sponse is ef­fec­tive in con­tin­u­al­ly strength­en­ing the fi­nan­cial sec­tor and pro­tect­ing the in­vest­ing pub­lic,” he said.

On Sun­day, the main op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Par­ty (PNP) said it is de­mand­ing a spe­cial au­dit of the SSL to as­cer­tain whether pub­lic funds were mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ed in the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar fraud scan­dal now en­gulf­ing the firm.

Op­po­si­tion spokesper­son on Fi­nance, Ju­lian Robin­son, ques­tioned whether gov­ern­ment agen­cies had in­vest­ments or ac­counts at SSL.

“We want to know whether gov­ern­ment agen­cies had in­vest­ments or ac­counts at SSL and what the sta­tus of those ac­counts would be, and whether the FSC it­self had an ac­count, whether it in­vest­ed mon­ey at SSL and whether it had any oth­er re­la­tion­ship with SSL.

“It is im­por­tant that tax­pay­ers know whether those monies that would have been in­vest­ed on be­half of the pub­lic purse are safe and whether those funds are sound,” Robin­son said, adding that the PNP is urg­ing the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al to con­duct a spe­cial au­dit of the Fi­nan­cial Ser­vices Com­mis­sion (FSC)

“We be­lieve it is im­por­tant for light to be shed on what took place at the FSC in terms of the de­ci­sion mak­ing around SSL,” he said.

Clarke said Mon­day that the Po­lice Fraud Squad and the Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Di­vi­sion had sought as­sis­tance last week from the FBI and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners.

On Mon­day, Clarke al­so named Bank of Ja­maica (BOJ) Gov­er­nor Richard Byles as the new chair­man of the FSC and that BOJ ex­ec­u­tives Wayne Robin­son, se­nior deputy gov­er­nor; George Rop­er, deputy gov­er­nor; and Jide Lewis deputy gov­er­nor will serve on the FSC board.

KINGSTON, Ja­maica, Jan 23, CMC