Judge absolves Alliance of all charges in no-case submission
Published:Saturday | April 6, 2024 | 12:06 AMTanesha Mundle/Staff Reporter
ALLIANCE INVESTMENTS Management Limited (AIML) has been freed of charges over alleged breaches of the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA).
Chief Parish Judge Chester Crooks on Thursday dismissed 17 POCA charges against the company after he upheld a no-case submission by King’s Counsel Tom Tavares-Finson and attorney-at-law Sean Castle.
“I don’t find that the case against AIML passes the threshold of going beyond a no-case submission,” Crooks said.
The company Alliance was charged with failure to file threshold transaction reports, which is a breach of POCA, and failure to file to the Financial Investigations Division’s (FID) chief technical director cash transactions of – or exceeding – US$15,000 or its equivalent in any other currency.
In the aftermath of the proceedings, Tavares-Finson told reporters that his client had complied with the law.
“The situation is that all 17 charges were dismissed. We had maintained from the very start that in fact threshold transaction reports were filed. The FID indicated they were not filed because they could not find them.
“In fact, we presented to the court evidence that their reports were in fact filed with the FID and it is the incompetence of the FID which led to the charges being laid against this company. It is the incompetence of the FID which had caused the Alliance Group to have to sell, to essentially close down. This is a serious matter and it has serious repercussions for the financial sector,” Tavares-Finson said.
$21.4 million fine
The investigation had also led to AIML’s former principals, Robert and Peter Chin, being charged and hauled before the court. However, they were subsequently fined a total of $21.4 million in the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court in March 2022 for various breaches of the Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) and Banking Services acts.
The company was fined $50,000 or nine months on each of the 28 counts of breaches of the Bank of Jamaica Act and $2.5 million or 12 months on each of the eight counts of breaches of the Banking Services Act.
The businessmen were charged with breaches of the BOJ Act, the Banking Services Act and the Proceeds of Crime Act.
Alliance Financial 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.
Additionally, Alliance Investment was charged with failure to file threshold transaction reports as mandated under the Proceeds of Crime Act for transactions of, or exceeding, US$15,000 (or its equivalent in any other currency) to the FID.
Arising from the guilty plea, the POCA charges against the men were dropped.