Pastor and businessman convicted for engaging in cash transaction in excess of $1m
Published:Tuesday | December 1, 2015 | 12:00 AM
A pastor and a businessman will have to pay more than $300,000 in fines or face jail time after being convicted of engaging in cash transactions in excess of $1 million.
Forty-four-year-old pastor, Ray Foster and 60-year-old Oswald Spence yesterday pleaded guilty in the Montego Bay Resident Magistrate's Court in St James to breaches of the Proceeds of Crime Act.
Foster was fined $250,000 while Spence was fined $100,000.
If the men do not pay the fine, they will be imprisoned for 30 days.
The pastor headed a church on Cooke Street, Savanna-la-Mar, Westmoreland.
Spence, a businessman of Claude Clarke Avenue in St James is the owner of a car dealership in Montego Bay.
Spence and Foster were arrested and charged in September following a raid at their business places during which receipts were found showing that they engaged in cash transactions in excess of $1 million.
In 2013, the Parliament approved changes to the law limiting cash transactions to one million dollars, an attempt to target criminals such as drug and gunrunners, human traffickers, gangsters and tax dodgers.