Numbers tell the story: Strengthening the FID a good move
Word from the Financial Investigations Division (FID) that it is being strengthened is indeed timely and welcome as there needs to be greater focus on disrupting and dismantling criminal organisations if the country is to break the back of the crime scourge that is affecting our image globally.
Mr Selvin Hay, the FID’s chief technical director, is reported on Page 3 of today’s Jamaica Observer as saying that, by the start of the next fiscal year, the FID will be transformed into a department, which means that it will have more autonomy and a greater staff complement.
The autonomy, he told last week’s sitting of the Jamaica Observer Press Club, “comes with more independence and… it will be better for the staff in terms of the powers and the reach… and additional resources”, therefore the FID ought to be a more effective entity.
Appropriate use of assets forfeiture has proven to be a useful tool in many jurisdictions to deal effectively with criminals and those who fund them as it deprives them of their ill-gotten gains and the instruments they use and rely on heavily to conduct illegal activities.
In some countries, the assets recovered are used to compensate victims of these criminal organisations, while some, particularly motor vehicles and boats, may be retained by the State for use by law enforcement agencies.
Based on the data provided by Mr Hay and his team, the FID has had considerable success over the past few years. At the end of September, they told us, the agency was in control of just over $2 billion in assets which the courts had ordered criminals to forfeit to the State. Additionally, it had secured court orders to freeze a further $3 billion in assets believed to have been amassed by criminals.
Among the forfeited assets are 61 properties valued at $1.6 billion, 40 motor vehicles valued at $24 million, and $424 million in cash. Additionally, the FID says it has 62 properties valued at just over $1 billion, cash of $1.3 billion, and 106 motor vehicles valued at $164 million awaiting court approval for forfeiture. And, to further demonstrate the agency’s resolve to carry out its mandate, it has targeted just over $5 billion in assets accumulated by criminals.
Those are impressive numbers and the FID should be commended for its work so far. We believe that its performance will improve if more law-abiding Jamaicans provide the police with information on criminal activity which, we expect, will be properly investigated before any attempt at prosecution is made. Operating in that manner will no doubt generate public confidence — a vital tool in the State’s efforts to take down criminal organisations whose members operate in contempt of the law.
The FID and other law enforcement agencies don’t need to look very far to see who are the individuals with unexplained wealth in the country. They span all professions and some of them seem to have no fear of displaying their questionable assets.
They must, as the FID’s Legal Officer Ms Charmaine Newsome said, be made to “appreciate [the adage] that crime doesn’t pay”.