More penalties loom for Alliance
Published:Friday | March 11, 2022 | 12:11 AM
Alliance Finance Limited (AFL), which was slapped Thursday with a $21.4-million fine for various breaches of the Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) and Banking Services acts, may still be hit with further financial sanctions.
The company is to appear in the Home Circuit Court on May 20 for a benefit hearing, which is to determine whether it will be further penalised for profits made from the breaches.
Senior Parish Judge Lori-Ann Cole-Montaque ordered the company to pay $50,000 each on 28 counts of breaches of Bank of Jamaica Act or serve nine months each.
The company was also asked to fork out $2.5 million each for eight counts of breaches of the Bank of Jamaica Act or 12 months each.
The company, which pleaded guilty to several counts of financial crimes in January, was given two working days within which to pay the fine.
Robert Chin, one of the principals of AFL, had entered the plea on the company’s behalf.
The judge, who accepted the recommendation of the Crown in relation to the sentence, indicated that the fines were reasonable given the nature of the offences, the sums that were involved, and the company’s early plea.
In the meantime, the charges of carrying on the business of lending foreign currency without being an authorised dealer and accepting deposits without the requisite licence from the Bank of Jamaica, levied against directors Peter Chin and Robert Chin, were withdrawn under a plea-deal arrangement.
However, the directors’ second company, Alliance Investment Management Limited, is to return to court on May 27 to answer to breaches of the Proceeds of Crime Act.
The company was charged with failure to file threshold transaction reports as mandated under the Proceeds of Crime Act for transaction or exceeding US$15,000 (or its equivalent in any other currency) to the Financial Investigations Division.
Lead attorney Tom Tavares-Finson, QC, lauded the director of public prosecutions for dropping the individual charges against the directors.
While noting that his clients were elated and extremely grateful for the outcome, Tavares-Finson stressed that it was never necessary for his clients to have been charged individually and arrested and dragged before the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court.
Alliance Finance and Peter Chin were charged with carrying on the business of lending foreign currency without being an authorised dealer in relation to more than 20 foreign-currency loans totalling approximately US$8 million to various entities.
Robert and Peter Chin were jointly charged for breaches of the Banking Services Act for accepting deposits without the requisite licence from the BOJ relating to a series of deposits in excess of US$7.5 million over a three-year period from 2014 to 2017.
Attorneys-at-law Sean Castle and Marcus Morris represented the Chins and their companies.