Stripped

A Jamaican drug boss who amassed a $1-billion portfolio of assets that included more than two dozen luxury homes and cars has lost half of it to the Government.

And financial investigators have already gone to court and obtained a restraint order that blocks Andrew Hamilton, a convicted drug dealer, from liquidating the rest of his assets, which includes another 14 multimillion-dollar homes.

A penthouse suite and two apartments nestled in the upper-class neighbourhood of Norbrook, St Andrew, and a mansion in Ironshore, St James, are among some two dozen assets, worth a little more than $500 million, Hamilton recently forfeited to the Government in compliance with an order by the Supreme Court.

In total, Hamilton gave up 14 homes, including six apartments in the gated Monte Carlo Isles complex on Seaview Avenue, also in St Andrew; four motor vehicles; four bulldozers; a fishing vessel purchased for $19 million; and a bank account with $19 million.

All the assets were acquired between 1998 and 2009 and registered to Hamilton, his relatives, including his elderly mother, friends and associates, according to the Financial Investigations Division (FID), which sought the forfeiture order.

The FID is the agency that enforces Jamaica’s Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA), the legislation crafted to deprive criminals of their ill-gotten gains.

The court order ends a 10-year legal fight by Hamilton to hold on to his assets, which the FID confirmed are already in the possession of the State.

Still, there are doubts among top law-enforcement operatives that financial investigators know the full extent of Hamilton’s asset portfolio.

“He is notorious for hiding his assets in other people’s name,” said one operative, who requested to remain anonymous.

WARNING TO OTHERS

The FID is currently managing over $1.8 billion in assets forfeited to the Government, including real estate, motor vehicles and cash, and over $1 billion in assets that have been restrained by the courts.

Hamilton’s case is the largest asset recovery order obtained by the FID and should serve as a warning to others who are engaged in criminality, Keith Darien, principal director of the FID, told The Sunday Gleaner.

“What this clearly demonstrates is that you are not too big financially for the FID to use POCA against you, once we believe that the assets were obtained from crime,” Darien said during an interview on Thursday.

“This is a strong message we are sending that irrespective of your wealth or status, we will do our appropriate investigations to strip you of those ill-gotten gains,” he said, while lauding the work done by United States and local law-enforcement partners, and the agency’s lead attorney Caroline Hay to untangle a “very complex” case.

Hamilton, a former Jamaican cop and postal worker, landed on the radar of local authorities after he pleaded guilty to money laundering and conspiracy to deal in ganja in a US court in 2012.

He was sentenced to four years in prison in February 2014, records show.

Following his conviction, the US Drug Enforcement Agency requested a civil investigation into his assets in Jamaica.

That’s when FID investigators discovered the drug dealer’s staggering portfolio of multimillion-dollar homes spread across six parishes, luxury cars, construction equipment imported by a construction company he started, and bank accounts.

A review of court records showed that five of the Monte Carlo Isle apartments and the lots for two of the Norbrook units were acquired over a seven-day period ending on June 25, 2008 for a total of J$61 million and US$300,000.

The others were acquired two days apart in March that year.

The current market value for each of the Monte Carlo Isle apartments is just over $42 million, the FID disclosed.

SECOND BATCH OF PROPERTIES

In December 2016, Hamilton and members of his family were arrested on money laundering charges along with attorney Dawn Satterswaite, who is accused of fronting the purchasing of the properties for the convicted drug dealer.

That case is ongoing.

It was during these investigations that the FID discovered the second batch of 14 properties, with a collective market value of $500 million, which were traced to Hamilton, but registered in the names of associates, Darien disclosed.

“Some real and some apparently unreal,” the FID second-in-command told The Sunday Gleaner, referring to the names displayed on properties.

Among the second batch of properties is a house located in the central Jamaica town of Mandeville worth US$1.2 million or over J$181 million, the FID disclosed.

Other properties are located in St Andrew, St James, St Catherine and St Elizabeth.

A restraint order was placed on the properties by the Supreme Court in 2019, Darien disclosed.

livern.barrett@gleanerjm.com