The Opposition, People’s National Party is expressing concerns about what it says is the apparent failure of the Financial Services Commission (FSC) to provide adequate regulatory oversight of companies operating in the non-deposit taking financial services industry.

It made the remarks on Tuesday amid the deepening probe into the multimillion-dollar fraud at investment firm Stocks and Securities Limited (SSL).

In a statement, the PNP said the recent media reports “have caused Jamaicans to become concerned about the safety of their funds at these companies.

“In the case of one financial institution, it is now clear that the FSC had grave concerns about the operations of the company going back several years, yet a massive fraud has now come to light which apparently has been going on for the past several years. This emerging situation is negatively impacting Jamaica’s reputation, both locally and internationally,” the Opposition said.

The Fraud Squad and Financial Investigations Division (FID) announced on Monday that questionable transactions were being made on some of the affected accounts at SSL for more than a decade.

Stating that the matter is being treated with the highest priority by the FID, the Fraud Squad and the FSC, Selwyn Hay, the FID’s chief technical director, said they are not yet able to quantify the exact amount fleeced from the affected accounts.

However, the Opposition says the country needs to know what steps were taken by the FSC to address “those serious issues then identified, as those concerns seem to have been effectively ignored.

“This failure of effective regulatory oversight has been to the detriment of members of the public who had their hard-earned savings invested there,” the Opposition said.

It added that the financial services industry operates on the principles of trust and confidence, as the repository of the country’s savings and the facilitator of capital for investment, and it is absolutely essential that there is effective regulatory oversight in the industry.

The Opposition said it is “calling on the Government to break its silence and tell the nation what it is doing to restore confidence to this critical sector of the economy.”