Thursday’s raid of the St Catherine Municipal Corporation (SCMC) by the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency (MOCA) came after almost five years of investigation into what the law enforcement agency said were “allegations of serious organised crime” involving significant sums of money at the local government authority.

Major Basil Jarrett, director of communications at MOCA, declined to state how much money was involved. However, sources with knowledge of the probe told the Jamaica Observer that it amounts to almost $1 billion.

“This was a very meticulous and painstaking investigation which began almost five years ago,” Major Jarrett said, adding that Thursday’s massive operation across 17 locations in Kingston, St Catherine, and Westmoreland saw law enforcers questioning suspects and seizing files and other evidence.

“Based on what we have collected so far we are confident that arrests will follow shortly,” Jarrett added.

The joint operation, which also included personnel from the Financial Investigations Division, Jamaica Constabulary Force, and Jamaica Defence Force started just before 5:00 am and ran for more than nine hours.

In an early morning release MOCA said the series of targeted operations was conducted to execute search warrants at the 17 locations in connection with the investigation.

“Those locations are affiliated to employees or associates of employees of the SCMC,” MOCA said.

Jarrett said MOCA “is unable to divulge further details at this point as the investigations are still ongoing”. However, he promised that the public would be apprised of the situation in due course, and that the operations will be conducted in accordance with the agency’s core values of independence, professionalism, accountability and integrity.

He also said the law enforcers were “endeavouring to execute this operation with as little impact or inconvenience to the public and to the normal running of the SCMC’s operations”.