CORRUPTION ENDEMIC IN JAMAICA:

Whatever hap­pened to the Finsac Enquiry?

Chen-Young’s Eagle Group was tak­en over by the Financial Sector Adjustment Company (Finsac) in 1997, and a foren­sic audit ini­ti­at­ed into the oper­a­tions of the group. The fol­low­ing year Chen-Young faced a $900-mil­lion law­suit brought by Eagle Merchant Bank and Crown Eagle — two of the com­pa­nies he found­ed. He sub­se­quent­ly left the island. Chen-Young has since repeat­ed­ly insist­ed that peo­ple con­nect­ed to Finsac have made relent­less efforts to dis­cred­it him and destroy his career​.Read more:http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com

Whatever hap­pened to Trafigura? Dutch author­i­ties want­ed to ques­tion PNP President Portia Simpson Miller, par­ty chair­man Robert Pickergill and senior mem­bers Phillip Paulwell and Colin Campbell about a $31 mil­lion dona­tion to the par­ty by Trafigura Beheer. It is ille­gal for Dutch com­pa­nies to donate to polit­i­cal par­ties. At the time of the dona­tion in 2006, Trafigura had an oil-lift­ing con­tract with the PNP Administration which had formed the gov­ern­ment. In court doc­u­ments, the PNP is con­tend­ing that the order for its offi­cials to answer ques­tions in rela­tion to the Trafigura probe by Dutch author­i­ties is a breach of their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights. Jamaican Government of the PNP took cam­paign funds from a Dutch Company doing busi­ness with the Government. jamaica​glean​er​.com

Whatever hap­pened to the Cuban Light Bulb case involv­ing Kern Spencer?Whatever hap­pened to the dozens and dozens of cas­es of cor­rup­tion on the part of the Government of Jamaica involv­ing both polit­i­cal parties?

Kern Spencer Colleen Wright

While a state min­is­ter in the ener­gy min­istry in the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment led by the PNP, Spencer was placed in charge of an ener­gy-sav­ing project. The project involved the dis­tri­b­u­tion of four mil­lion free Cuban light bulbs island wide. The project was imple­ment­ed in July 2006.^[3] Allegations of irreg­u­lar­i­ties in the project were lev­eled against Spencer in Parliament in November 2007 by then Energy Minister Clive Mullings, who asked the audi­tor-gen­er­al and the con­trac­tor-gen­er­al to probe the mat­ter ^[3] Clive Mullings, told Parliament that $114 mil­lion was improp­er­ly spent on the dis­tri­b­u­tion of four mil­lion ener­gy-sav­ing light bulbs donat­ed by the Cuban Government to the peo­ple of Jamaica.^[4] In January 2008, the audi­tor-gen­er­al report­ed that about 176,380 of the four mil­lion bulbs, cost­ing approx­i­mate­ly $92 mil­lion, could not be account­ed for. There was also an absence of an effec­tive sys­tem of bud­getary con­trol result­ing in the mak­ing of pay­ments and the incur­ring of unpaid oblig­a­tions of $185.3 mil­lion over the approved finan­cial sup­port. On 26 February 2008 Kern Spencer was arrest­ed and slapped with sev­en charges. He is fac­ing three charges of con­spir­a­cy to defraud, one charge for breach­ing the Prevention of Corruption Act, and three charges for breach­ing the Money Laundering Act.^[3]Spencer spent the night in jail and remained behind bars until he was able to post bail on 29 February 2008.^{[8]wike­pe­dia}

These are some of the most egre­gious cas­es of cor­rup­tion graft and dis­hon­esty in recent mem­o­ry in Jamaica, all of which should have land­ed peo­ple in prison for very lengthy peri­ods of time. To date not a sin­gle per­son has been even tried in a court of law, much less con­vict­ed for these crimes.

In Jamaica like many oth­er nations the poor bears the brunt of the clutch­es of the law, hard­ly is there a coun­try which one may argue with any degree of legit­i­ma­cy that the laws are applied fair­ly across the board , irre­spec­tive of offend­er. Jamaica how­ev­er seem to go over­board to show that the polit­i­cal class and those with mon­ey are above the laws.

The Criminal Justice System would be a joke, were it not so impor­tant to the lives of so many. The like­ly hood of the poor­est and least influ­en­tial per­son who com­mits a crime get­ting caught or get­ting con­vict­ed is between 5 – 7%. That means between 93 – 95% per­sons who have com­mit­ted mur­der will nev­er have to fear get­ting caught. This met­ric is based on a one per­son per mur­der assumption.

The fact that there is such a huge unlike­ly hood that a felon will nev­er be made to pay for his crimes , they are more like­ly to be ser­i­al felons, to include those who mur­der. With all of that said, the chances of a politi­cian get­ting charged crim­i­nal­ly, con­vict­ed. or impris­oned is pret­ty much Zero!!

To the best of my rec­ol­lec­tion the only Politician ever to see what the inside a Prison look like was J.A.G. Smith for­mer labor min­is­ter under the Seaga Administration of the 1980“s, for alleged­ly steal­ing monies from poor farm work­ers accounts.

The Kern Spencer tri­al has been to my mind one of the most galling and (bare-faced) acts of crim­i­nal­i­ty to go unpun­ished. When the mat­ter came to light I stat­ed emphat­i­cal­ly that this case would go on and on then dis­posed of in the usu­al way, wit­ness­es can’t be found, file miss­ing, wit­ness­es can­not recall what they had said in their depo­si­tions, or any bull-shit of that nature.

There is begin­ning to be a gen­er­al con­sen­sus among even peo­ple who were staunch sup­port­ers, that the Country’s chief pros­e­cu­tor the Director Of Public Prosecution is incom­pe­tent, in over her head, or worse, I was one of her sup­port­ers who now ques­tion her com­pe­ten­cy. Despite being large­ly ineffectual,to her cred­it Paula Llewellyn did bring charges against Kern Spencer, it would appear that all the Jamaican peo­ple look­ing for jus­tice will get was the night he spent in jail February 28^th 2008.

From the onset the Magistrate pre­sid­ing over the case seemed over­ly aggres­sive toward the pros­e­cu­tion, this is not unusu­al as the Jamaican Courts are heav­i­ly slant­ed toward the defen­dant. This Magistrate how­ev­er seem over­ly hos­tile toward the peo­ple’s case. I fig­ured then and there then that like all of the oth­er politi­cians accused of crim­i­nal malfea­sance this case would go the route of all of the oth­er calls for justice.

The Magistrate made it obvi­ous that Spencer would not need a defense lawyer, she would cham­pi­on his defense, to date, the case is in lim­bo, those look­ing for a just res­o­lu­tion should move on and not hold their breaths.

Jamaica is a small coun­try, which for years have bor­rowed more mon­ey that it is capa­ble of repay­ing, as such more than 50% of the coun­try’s resources go to ser­vic­ing inter­est on it’s debt, as cat­a­stroph­ic and ulti­mate­ly cat­a­clysmic as this course is , the coun­try’s lead­ers con­tin­ue to seek out every pos­si­ble lender, try­ing to bor­row more money.

There’s no indi­ca­tion as to what that mon­ey has been used for. The coun­try’s infra­struc­ture, where it exist, are anti­quat­ed and dilap­i­dat­ed . Where the gov­ern­ment has built any struc­ture those struc­tures rep­re­sent the needs of today at best, with no thought for pop­u­la­tion growth. At this rate the coun­try will con­tin­ue to be a third world coun­try long after car­ribean neigh­bors, Trinidad, and Barbados have reached first world status.

The Country’s laws are no bet­ter, where new leg­is­la­tion com­men­su­rate with the sophis­ti­cat­ed real­i­ties of the coun­trys crim­i­nal prac­ti­tion­ers, they are usu­al­ly vague and poor­ly con­struct­ed. Which usu­al­ly result in guilty crim­i­nals walk­ing free due to crafty high priced (vul­tures),.….….….….….… I mean attorneys.

The atti­tude of the present Government has demon­stra­bly been one of sur­vival. Survival so it may con­tin­ue to hold state pow­er, but more so dodg­ing and mov­ing from cri­sis to cri­sis, through debt adjust­ments and oth­er short term fix­es. They have asked pub­lic sec­tor work­ers to sac­ri­fice by not ask­ing for, or expect­ing wage increas­es, even as the val­ue of the Dollar depre­ci­ates to almost J$100 to US$1 presently.

What this means is that, not only will Government work­ers not receive a wage increase, the val­ue of what they were receiv­ing pre­vi­ous­ly will con­tin­u­al­ly be whit­tled away. At the same time the Government engages in the pur­chase of high end lux­u­ry Sport Utility Vehicles for politi­cians com­fort at the expense of taxpayers.

The coun­try con­tin­ues to grap­ple with astro­nom­i­cal­ly high crime, com­pa­ra­ble to only five oth­er coun­tries in the world. The Police Department reports, it only has about 50% of the tools it needs to do the job it is tasked with doing.

There seem to be no plan on the part of the exist­ing gov­ern­ment to change direc­tion from the inevitable col­li­sion course it’s on with des­tiny. Whether that course adjust­ment will come through more aus­ter­i­ty, self reliance, reduc­ing cor­rup­tion and crime, thus attract­ing invest­ment and mem­bers of the dias­po­ra return­ing home is any­one’s guess. From my van­tage point it seem that the plan is the same , stay as long as pos­si­ble steal as much as pos­si­ble, to hell with country.

Jamaica now depend on the United States to pun­ish its crim­i­nals, as has been the case in the Christopher Coke and oth­er crim­i­nal cases.

Both of Jamaica’s polit­i­cal par­ties sim­ply refus­es to extri­cate them­selves from the ten­ta­cles of cor­rup­tion and crim­i­nal alle­giance. The peo­ple deserve bet­ter, yet there is no moral lead­er­ship, so it’s every man for himself.

Hill: Rainford:

Today we learned that Carlos Hill, who is on $15-mil­lion bail, and is charged with fraud­u­lent­ly induc­ing, stem­ming from alle­ga­tions that he coerced per­sons to invest in his bil­lion-dol­lar alter­na­tive invest­ment scheme, had his 15 mil­lion dol­lar bail post­ed by the then Permanent Sectetary in the Ministry of Local Government Robert Rainford, under the for­mer JLP government.

At the time of his alleged crimes Kern Spencer of the PNP was the Parliamentary Secretary in the National Security Ministry

Hill oper­at­ed the scheme for five years before its col­lapse in 2008. If con­vict­ed, Hill could be sen­tenced to sev­en years’ impris­on­ment. Even if Hill is acquit­ted in the Home Circuit Court, he would still not be out of the woods. Hill, his broth­er Bertram and for­mer Cash Plus exec­u­tive, Peter Wilson, are also fac­ing pros­e­cu­tion in the Corporate Area Resident Magistrate’s Court in rela­tion to the scheme. They are to be tried in the Resident Magistrate’s court on charges of obtain­ing mon­ey by false pre­tense, con­spir­a­cy to defraud and fraud­u­lent conversion.(jamaicaobserver)

We under­stand that when con­tact­ed abroad Rainford hung up the phone on mem­bers of the media who want­ed to ask him ques­tions about his asso­ci­a­tion with Hill a con­vict­ed felon in the United States, who was under indict­ment in Jamaica.

There are real­ly no bound­aries in Jamaica, no one seem to have a moral com­pass even when the instances of con­flict of inter­est and cor­rup­tion are the most glar­ing. Jamaica the once pris­tine pearl of the Caribbean has been reduced to a den of thieves, and a cesspool of cor­rup­tion and graft.