Jamaica’s Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) is concerned about the Financial Services Commission’s (FSC) failure to offer effective regulatory control of non-deposit-taking financial companies following the fraud scandal at Stocks and Securities Limited (SSL).
The Opposition underlined in a media release on Tuesday that, in the case of SSL, “it is now clear that the FSC had grave concerns about the operations of the company going back several years.”
In expressing its concern, the Opposition said Jamaica needs to know what steps the FSC took to address the major issues, claiming that the concerns were ignored.
It said: “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 party said the situation is impacting Jamaica’s reputation negatively, both locally and globally, and it is therefore calling on the government to break its silence and inform the country what it is doing to restore confidence in this key sector of the economy.
According to reports, a former SSL employee has been involved in a massive fraud, including missing funds from Jamaican sprint legend Usain Bolt’s accounts.
The former athlete’s manager, Nugent Walker, confirmed the incident last week and said Bolt became aware of the discrepancies with his accounts.
SSL said in a statement last Thursday that the situation had been reported to the police. However, the amount of money defrauded was not disclosed by the company.
SSL said safeguarding client assets is of the utmost importance, adding that it has implemented several internal measures and procedures to secure those assets and detect suspicious activity.
The investment firm said it would continue to work with law enforcement throughout the investigation.
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