KINGSTON, Jamaica — The Financial Investigations Division (FID) of the Ministry of Finance is reporting that a former accounting officer of the Accountant General’s Department (AGD) and a prominent cosmetics store operator have been ordered to pay more than $34 million as pecuniary penalties in keeping with the Proceeds of Crime Act.

Both orders were granted in the Home Circuit Court on October 18 and 29, 2019, respectively.

A Pecuniary Penalty Order is granted in a specific amount after the Court, upon hearing evidence concerning a convicted offender’s assets and expenditure, is satisfied that the offender has benefited in the said amount from his or her criminal lifestyle or from any specific crime.

The former employee of the Accountant General’s Department (AGD) was, on October 18, 2019, ordered to pay the sum of $20,828,192.08, less the sum of $2,062,136.86 already forfeited from two of his associates.

Allegations against the former employee are that he conspired with others to defraud the public purse of $26,528,510.64 when he reactivated the accounts of deceased pensioners resulting in the AGD paying out this money in pensions. In September 2014, he pleaded guilty to 44 counts of obtaining money by means of false pretences and was sentenced to three years imprisonment on each count.

The Pecuniary Penalty imposed is in addition to this sentence.

On October 29,  the cosmetic store owner was ordered to pay the Crown $13,862,494.20 after the Court found that she benefited from her criminal lifestyle in that amount. On June 30, 2015, she pleaded guilty to Possession of and Dealing in Cocaine and was fined $500,000 and $1 million respectively.

The Supreme Court found that she paid these fines from illicit funds and added these sums to her Pecuniary Penalty. The court reasoned that she was shown to have incurred substantial expenses over a period of time without providing any reliable evidence that these expenses were met from her legitimate earnings.

Both convicts have been given six months to make these payments to the Crown. Default in making the payments in the time allowed is a criminal offence which attracts jail time of up to five years.

The Pecuniary Penalty Order also is not discharged by the defendant serving his or her additional sentence in this regard and the FID may exercise its powers to seize and dispose of assets belonging to the defendant in lieu of payment.

The cosmetics store owner has given verbal notice of her intention to appeal the order against her.

Chief Technical Director of the FID, Robin Sykes, says the FID intends to collect every cent of these judgments which, he says, represent years of hard work by the FID to identify criminal transactions and forensically separate same from any known legitimate earnings to deprive criminals of benefits derived from crime.