The Financial Investigations Division (FID) has indicated it is continuing its forfeiture proceedings against Alliance Finance Limited (AFL) in relation to breaches of the Bank of Jamaica and Banking Services acts, despite a recent court ruling.

In March 2022 AFL was fined a total of $21.4 million in the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court for the breaches. The company had pleaded guilty to several counts of financial crimes in January 2022.

The FID subsequently initiated and completed a criminal forfeiture investigation against AFL regarding its benefit from the offences for which it was convicted.

The file is currently before the Supreme Court for forfeiture hearing later in 2024.

Alliance Investment Management Limited (AIML) was also charged with 17 counts of failure to file threshold transaction reports, however, a no-case submission was recently upheld by the court in relation to those charges.

The FID says while it respects this ruling, it does not affect ongoing efforts to recover the full benefits obtained by AFL from the offences for which it was convicted. 

However, responding to the FID’s statements this evening, AIML’s attorney, Tom Tavares Finson suggested AIML’s founders could take legal action against the FID.

He accused the FID of attempting to “conflate issues by raising the fact that as part of a plea arrangement AFL pleaded guilty to minor regulatory breaches.”

He asserted that several entities were guilty of the same regulatory breaches and were granted a waiver shortly after the AFL persecution to avoid being held accountable.

“Important to note that AFL and AIML are separate entities. The baseless POCA charges are what were fatal to the operations of AIML under the leadership of its Founders. The FID statement only serves to compound the injustice meted out to AIML and does not acknowledge the grave error in the conduct of the FID, FSC and the BOJ,” Tavares Finson said. 

“Given the collapse of the POCA case against AIML due to wholly unreasonable and baseless FID/FSC/BOJ overreach, the entity’s founders reserves the right to take legal action to recoup losses incurred,” he continued.

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