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Police Seize 12 Firearms In The Last 24 Hours

CRIME BEAT

The police are report­ing that 12 firearms and over 100 rounds of ammu­ni­tion have been seized in oper­a­tions across the island in the last 24 hours.

The Jamaica Constabulary Force’s Corporate Communications Unit (CCU) says eight per­sons have been tak­en into cus­tody in con­nec­tion with the seizures, but adds that their iden­ti­ties are being with­held pend­ing fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tions. CCU says six firearms were recov­ered in St James, which has already record­ed more than 100 mur­ders this year. According to the police, three firearms were seized in Kingston and St Andrew and one each in St Thomas, Mandeville and St Catherine. Police Commissioner Dr Carl Williams says the seizure of 12 firearms over a 24-hour peri­od demon­strates the resolve of the police to remove guns from the hands of crim­i­nals. Williams also not­ed that the weapons were seized with­out any gun­fire and said this was a clear demon­stra­tion of pro­fes­sion­al­ism. The police report­ed that in one of the oper­a­tions a Glock pis­tol was tak­en from two men trav­el­ling in a motor vehi­cle inside a plaza on Old Hope Road in St Andrew.

Attorney Failed To Hand Over $70m For Property Sale — Probe

Senior Superintendent of Police in charge of the Fraud Squad Anthony McLaughlin has con­firmed that the police have been con­duct­ing an ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion into a com­plaint by the Factories Corporation of Jamaica (FCJ) that an attor­ney had failed to hand over $70 mil­lion he or she alleged­ly received up to February 23, 2011, from the sale of one of the enti­ty’s prop­er­ties. In a Regulatory Audit and Financial Statements Assessments of the FCJ, the Pamela Monroe Ellis-led Auditor General’s Department report­ed that since 2011, inter­est and penal­ties amount­ing to $39.6 mil­lion have been applied to the out­stand­ing sum. Monroe Ellis point­ed out that sub­se­quent to the audit, the FCJ report­ed the mat­ter to the Fraud Squad. The audit, which was done in January this year, cov­ered the peri­od April 2010 to November 2015.
CONTRACT AGREEMENTS

The over­sight body divulged that up to the time of report­ing, the FCJ had not tak­en steps to recov­er $750,000 advanced on December 22, 2011, to the said attor­ney con­tract­ed at a cost of $3 mil­lion to review the cor­po­ra­tion’s pol­i­cy and pro­ce­dures man­u­al. According to the audi­tor gen­er­al, the attor­ney did not deliv­er the draft man­u­al and the ser­vice was ter­mi­nat­ed in September 2012. The FCJ sub­se­quent­ly engaged a for­mer employ­ee to devel­op the pol­i­cy and pro­ce­dures man­u­al at a cost of $750,000. “In none of the cir­cum­stances men­tioned above did the FCJ present for audit scruti­ny, con­tract agree­ments set­ting out the terms and con­di­tions for the engage­ment of all the attor­neys. The absence of con­tract agree­ments high­lights a lack of trans­paren­cy and com­pro­mis­es FCJ’s abil­i­ty to pro­tect pub­lic funds,” Monroe Ellis stated.

CONVEYANCE SERVICES

“The mat­ter above per­tain­ing to the attor­ney’s delay in hand­ing over the $109.6 mil­lion rein­forces the impor­tance of FCJ con­tem­plat­ing the use of inter­nal legal ser­vices to bring such trans­ac­tions ful­ly with­in the realm of the Government’s account­abil­i­ty frame­work,” she added. Monroe Ellis had ear­li­er high­light­ed that the FCJ took the deci­sion to engage attor­neys to pro­vide con­veyance ser­vices instead of using the attor­ney employed to the com­pa­ny. The FCJ is owned by the Government and falls under the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation. The cor­po­ra­tion’s man­date is to be a cat­a­lyst for job cre­ation, devel­op­ment, and sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic growth and includes the devel­op­ment and man­age­ment of indus­tri­al and com­mer­cial space in the pub­lic sec­tor. The cor­po­ra­tion’s pri­ma­ry activ­i­ty is the con­struc­tion, man­age­ment, and rental of fac­to­ries. It is the largest provider of indus­tri­al and com­mer­cial real estate in Jamaica to a wide cross sec­tion of indus­tries, includ­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing, food pro­cess­ing, and com­mer­cial activities.
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