Editorial | Time for UWOs

The recent agreement in London by the wife of an Azerbaijani banker to forfeit two luxury properties in the United Kingdom is a reminder of the Jamaican Government’s continued pussyfooting with legislation for the issuing of unexplained wealth orders (UWO).

The law is one of the outstanding things on the bucket list to which the Holness administration agreed with the Crime Oversight and Monitoring Committee (CMOC) over four years ago, as part of efforts to tackle the country’s pervasive problem of crime and corruption.

But the question of UWOs has been on Jamaica’s agenda even before then. Indeed, it was one of the initiatives for which Howard Mitchell campaigned during his 2017-2019 presidency of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica.

The matter can wait no longer. Prime Minister Andrew Holness must command the appropriate ministers and legal drafters to get the law completed and tabled in Parliament, to make good on the administration’s promise, albeit late, to have it passed during the 2023-24 legislative year.

In the UK, UWOs, introduced in 2017 via the Criminal Finances Act, are designed for use against foreigners and so-called politically exposed persons (PEPs), who use Britain to stash and launder illegally amassed money. Much of that ill-gotten wealth is held in real estate.

The law allows the authorities to seek from a judge an order for a targeted person to explain the source of his wealth, if it is believed that it is disproportionate to his known legal sources of income. The UWO process is less demanding than the standards that have to be met using the Proceeds of Crime legislation.

In 2018, Zamira Hajiyeva was the first person served with an UWO with respect to a luxury home in Knightsbridge and a golf club in Ascot, with a combined worth of more than £18 million.

Mrs Hajiyeva is the wife of Jahangir Hajiyev, a former long-serving chairman of the International Bank of Azerbaijan, who is in jail in Baku for embezzling millions of dollars from the bank. He was also convicted of other crimes.

Mrs Hajiyeva fought the UWO in the British courts, including her appeals to the Supreme Court. She lost, allowing the National Crime Agency, roughly equivalent to Jamaica’s Major Organised Crime & Anti-Corruption Agency, to last year file a civil recovery claim for the two properties. On August 1, the High Court granted the order, allowing for the forfeiture of 70 per cent of the properties.

ADD FLEXIBILITY TO THE TOOLKIT

Crime and corruption are estimated to cost the Jamaican economy between five and 10 per cent of its gross domestic product annually. The bill now would be between J$155 billion and J$310 billion.

This sum could go a far way in helping to fix the crisis in the education and healthcare systems, or in building resilience in the national infrastructure.

It makes sense, therefore, for the country to aggressively assault corruption on all fronts to stanch this leakage.

It is true that the Financial Investigation Division (FID), an agency of the finance ministry, has pursued, and continues to pursue, assets recovery cases under the island’s Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA).

However, a forfeiture order under POCA in Jamaica generally follows the conviction of a person for a crime, and that the individual has been shown to have benefited from a criminal lifestyle. Or, the target may be someone who holds an asset on behalf of a person who enjoyed the proceeds of crime and/or engaged in a criminal lifestyle.

On its face, an unexplained wealth order is simpler, placing the burden on the targeted individual to show that his or her wealth was legitimately obtained, which Mrs Hajiyeva was unable to do.

Being able to utilise UWOs would, as Howard Mitchell observed way back in 2019, add flexibility to the toolkit against crime and corruption. That is, if the authorities actually make use of the device.