THE police say that they are unable to touch slain racketeer Donovan ‘Bulbie’ Bennett’s estimated $100 million fortune because there is no law that allows them to seize assets that are not directly traceable to gangsters.

There is no law now that would allow the police to grab Bennett’s assumed assets until other claimants prove that they were the proceeds of crime.

“We can do nothing in regards to the confiscation of these assets,” said assistant commissioner of police Glenmore Hinds, head of Operation Kingfish, which targets gangs and organised criminals.

“The (Proceeds of Crime) bill is in Parliament and we have to wait on that to be passed.”

Bennett was head of the Spanish Town-based Klansman gang, which competed with another notorious outfit, the One Order gang, for control of the old capital’s extortion and protection rackets.

Last month, Bennett was killed by the police during a gunfight at a seven-bedroom mansion – one of several homes he is said to own – at Tanaky, a rural hide-way near Rock River in Jamaica’s south-central parish of Clarendon.

The house is situated on a bluff, providing a scenic vista of the Rio Minho and its flood planes below. But neither on that house nor any other property is there any record or paper trail to show that they were owned by Bennett or that they even exist.

“By official records, he owns nothing,” Hinds told the Sunday Observer.

There is no record of the block factory he was said to own. Nor can the police directly trace to Bennett any of the estimated 80 vehicles, including buses, construction equipment and luxury cars, he was believed to have.

In the case of the Tanaky home, into which the Sunday Observer made extensive checks, there was no record of the development at the Clarendon Parish Council, and officials theorised that the house may have been built on “captured” land.

The National Land Agency (NLA) said the property is not in its database. The agency was unable to say definitively whether the land was owned privately or by government, explaining that its national land mapping project – the Land Administration and Management Programme – has not yet reached Clarendon.

Bennett’s business dealings and associations are currently under scrutiny, and Hinds declined to say too much, fearing that he could compromise ongoing investigations of Bennett’s associates and relatives in some of whose names the gang leader’s holdings are believed to be registered.

On Wednesday, Police Commissioner Lucius Thomas said in Spanish Town that already there was infighting among members of Bennett’s gang over the sharing of assets he left behind, and who should have control of the take from the extortion racket.

Shortly after the killing of Bennett, Hinds reported that the gangster had lived a life of luxury, owning 80 motor vehicles, and earning lucrative sums from construction and haulage contracts, and extortion.

“We believe that a conservative monetary estimate. is well over $100 million, but I cannot say more on this as this is the subject of ongoing investigations,” said ACP Hinds.

Rigorous checks by the Sunday Observer at the record agencies and elsewhere revealed that Bennett had been meticulous about leaving no paper trail.

The Titles Office in Kingston, the chief agency for recording real estate activities, and the Clarendon Parish Council, the authority for the Tanaky district where he lived, have no records of Bennett owning land or constructing a building in Clarendon.

Under the law, before construction is done, a submission of the plans should be made to the local parish council for building approval.

“The only record we have (for construction) in the district is a church,” said a parish council representative, who also told the Sunday Observer that Bennett was likely a squatter on the Tanaky property.

At the NLA, which is currently conducting a programme to register lands islandwide, a representative told the Sunday Observer that they have not yet begun to map Clarendon and as such would have no records of the Tanaky land.

The legal owner of the seven-bedroom Tanaky house remains in doubt, though the name of a relative has been linked to the property.

However, this theory seems shaky as the Titles Office says it has absolutely no record of a title for the Tanaky property.

Even the legal ownership of the 80 motor vehicles attributed to Bennett by the police are untraceable directly to him.

“He owned nothing,” Hinds emphasised, when questioned about the vehicles, adding that most of the assets are in other people’s names.

When the police killed Bennett at his Tanaky home, the cops reported that seven other premises linked to Bennett were raided simultaneously.

But according to further reports, those houses were not necessarily part of Bennett’s possessions but simply places where he frequented. The police have not released addresses of these properties.

“These are part of our investigation and we cannot disclose the locations,” ACP Hinds told the Sunday Observer.

The police also believe that Bennett, whom they described as smart and having business savvy, had commercial links to different companies.

“As a result of his direct investment in heavy-duty equipment, Bennett became deeply involved in construction and haulage, not only in St Catherine, but in other parishes as well,” Hinds said shortly after Bennett’s death.

The police are certain that business deals were done, but releasing the names, they argue, would compromise their ongoing investigations.

fosterp@jamaicaobserver.com