FID Partnerships Yielding Success in Financial Crime Investigations

Strong partnerships with law-enforcement agencies are being credited among the reasons for successful probes by the Financial Investigations Division (FID).

Brand Communications Specialist at the FID, Garth Williams, told JIS News that the entity, which is the sole law-enforcement agency in the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service, works in tandem with local and international bodies to fight financial crimes.

“The FID is a specialised financial investigation agency… and we investigate a wide variety of financial crimes [including] lottery scamming, fraud, phishing, [and] money laundering,” he said.

“We pursue evidence-based prosecutions of financial crimes in the courts through a variety of partnerships with law-enforcement agencies locally and internationally. We are talking about [the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency] MOCA, the [Jamaica Constabulary Force] JCF, the Jamaica Customs Agency (JCA) as well [as] regulatory entities [like] the Financial Services Commission, the Integrity Commission and [the Passport, Immigration and Citizenship Agency] PICA,” he added.

Mr. Williams further informed that “Internally, we have forensic examiners along with the JCF’s Constabulary Financial Unit which is comprised of JCF officers, particularly from the Counter Terrorism and Organised Crime Investigation Branch (CTOC), who are assigned to work with the FID.

“The intelligence we get from our partners leads those evidence-based prosecutions in the court with actually a pretty high rate of success,” he said.

Meanwhile, Mr. Williams is reporting that lottery scamming and money laundering continue to be the most prevalent financial crimes in Jamaica.

“We see a lot of lottery scamming cases [and] we are also catching a lot of these lottery scammers. We see a lot of money laundering, and a lot of people don’t understand that money laundering comes in various forms. It’s not just about a druggist who earns his money and tries to ‘wash it’,” he explained.

Mr. Williams noted that persons are getting involved in money laundering crimes by allowing themselves to be used as conduits for transactions.

“Their bank accounts are being used; they’re called money mules. We see a lot of people using their bank accounts to support the entry of dirty money, these illicit gains into our economy,” he said.

Mr. Williams added that insider threat through bank fraud is also investigated by the FID, pointing out that they have reaped successes.

“We see a lot of fraud as well, and that has been rearing its head more and more in recent times. So [we are] talking about a lot of financial institutions [that] are being hit by insider threat. So, it’s not outsiders hacking in, even though that happens. But what we see is people abusing their positions of power and privilege for their illicit gain,” he said.