标签： Jamaica

KINGSTON, Jamaica — Two of Jamaica’s leading financial regulatory and law enforcement agencies have cemented a new strategic alliance to tackle pervasive illicit financial activity across the island. The Financial Investigations Division (FID) and the Revenue Protection Department (RPD) have officially signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that establishes a formal structure for deepened collaboration against a range of threats, including money laundering, terrorist financing, revenue fraud, and other systemic financial crimes.

Dennis Chung, Chief Technical Director of the FID, emphasized that the agreement builds on a already productive working relationship between the two agencies, while formalizing critical processes that will amplify their collective impact. Under the new framework, clear protocols for cross-agency information sharing, case referrals, and coordinated enforcement actions are now in place. These structured arrangements, Chung explained, will drastically boost both bodies’ capacity to identify, probe, and disrupt illegal financial activities that erode government revenue and undermine the stability and integrity of Jamaica’s entire financial system. He noted that this kind of targeted strategic partnership is a foundational requirement for effective national regulatory enforcement and crime mitigation.

Cranston Morgan, who serves as both Chief Technical Director of the RPD and Commissioner of Revenue Protection, echoed Chung’s optimism, highlighting that the alliance will strengthen both agencies’ ability to rapidly respond to financial misconduct and guard the broader public interest.

Morgan framed the MoU as another measurable milestone in the ongoing effort to tighten inter-agency cooperation. It creates a reliable foundation for timely information exchanges, more cohesive operational coordination, and more strategic utilization of each agency’s unique institutional expertise when addressing revenue offenses and linked financial crimes. He emphasized that the partnership delivers mutual benefits for both bodies, while also advancing the Jamaican government’s wider national goals: protecting public funds and bolstering domestic and international confidence in Jamaica’s financial regulatory ecosystem.

At its core, the MoU outlines a formal legal framework for consultation, collaborative action, and lawful information sharing that aligns with both agencies’ statutory mandates. Beyond information sharing, the agreement is designed to strengthen intelligence gathering, streamline cross-agency coordination, and enable more effective criminal and civil investigations as well as enforcement outcomes.

The agreement details clear reciprocal obligations for both agencies. The FID will supply the RPD with raw data and supporting materials required for intelligence development and ongoing investigations, alongside advance notification of any upcoming criminal probes that involve individuals or entities of interest to the RPD. It will also share requested statistical data to support RPD work.

In exchange, the RPD will provide the FID with its own relevant data and materials to aid the FID’s intelligence and investigation activities. This includes alerts of suspected revenue crimes and other financial offenses involving parties the FID is tracking, plus relevant statistical data, specialized technical assistance, and compliance data that can support the FID’s investigation and prosecution of financial crimes.

Additional provisions of the MoU cover expanded collaborative activities: case referrals between agencies, joint enforcement operations, parallel criminal investigations, cross-training for personnel from both bodies, and coordinated public outreach initiatives. These outreach efforts are designed to educate key stakeholders on the full range of risks linked to corruption, violations of revenue law, money laundering, and terrorist financing. The agreement also formalizes governance protocols to ensure all shared information is handled securely, protected from unauthorized access, and used only for appropriate, legally permitted purposes.

As Jamaica’s legislative committee weighs proposed changes to expand the national Child Diversion Programme into school disciplinary spaces, Education Minister Dr. Dana Morris Dixon has drawn a critical line, urging policymakers to preserve the separation between criminal offenses and school-based behavioral misconduct. She warned that ill-considered expansion of the diversion program could erode the foundational function of the country’s existing child protection infrastructure.

Speaking during Thursday’s sitting of the Joint Select Committee tasked with reviewing the Child Diversion Act, Morris Dixon acknowledged that persistent disruptive behavior in Jamaican schools demands more robust, targeted intervention. However, she pushed back against framing every campus incident through the lens of the criminal justice system.

Her comments were delivered in direct response to proposals put forward by University of the Commonwealth Caribbean student Daniel Barnes, who had called on the committee to incorporate common school disciplinary issues—including physical fights, persistent bullying, and petty theft—into the Child Diversion Programme. The push for reform stems from growing public anxiety over rising rates of youth violence across Jamaican educational institutions.

Barnes, who serves on a school disciplinary committee, told the panel that current pathways for addressing escalating misconduct are fragmented and ineffective. He noted that even when schools refer students with persistent behavioral issues to existing agencies such as the Child Protection and Family Services Agency (CPFSA) and restorative justice practitioners, interventions often fail to drive meaningful long-term behavior change. To address this gap, he put forward a three-tiered framework designed to intervene early, before minor misconduct escalates into criminal activity or severe violent harm.

Morris Dixon countered that welfare-focused interventions for at-risk students are already well-established under Jamaica’s Child Care and Protection Act (CCPA), delivered primarily through the CPFSA, which maintains direct ongoing partnerships with schools and families across the island. “In the situations that have come up in recent times, the CPFSA has been involved with the schools. They have taken the children, they have visited the families, visited the homes, done the psychological support, given that kind of support, and given lots of other support to the children, very similar to what happens in the Child Diversion Programme,” the minister explained. “There’s just a difference between children who come into conflict with the law and those who are seen to be somewhat uncontrollable or having issues.”

While the two systems use similar supportive approaches, Morris Dixon stressed that the distinction between them is fundamental and must not be eliminated. She urged committee members to conduct a full mapping of all existing youth support frameworks operating in Jamaican schools before moving forward with any legislative amendments.

“It’s important that we understand the whole lay of the land, which is something I have been saying, so that we understand where child diversion starts and ends, where CCPA starts and ends, and where there are any gaps, in terms of some of the approaches and techniques, and then when we find the gaps, we figure out which legislation is appropriate to do it under,” she added.

The minister also suggested that many of the perceived gaps in addressing school misconduct stem from administrative shortcomings rather than gaps in legislation, warning against creating duplicative systems that waste resources and confuse institutional roles. Her intervention has reframed the committee’s debate, shifting focus from sweeping expansion to targeted gap-fixing that preserves the core purposes of both the child protection and criminal diversion frameworks.

A heated public debate has erupted over policing accountability in Jamaica after National Security Minister Dr Horace Chang drew widespread criticism for his recent announcement that officers of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) will not be required to wear body-worn cameras (BWCs) during high-risk operations targeting armed criminals. Chang made his position clear during a post-Cabinet media briefing held Wednesday, arguing that mandating cameras for confrontations with heavily armed suspects is fundamentally illogical. He questioned the practicality of requiring officers to wear recording devices when pursuing suspects armed with high-powered weapons like M16 assault rifles capable of firing 60 rounds per minute, noting that officers prioritize taking cover and returning fire during active shootouts, not managing body camera equipment. The minister doubled down on his stance, emphasizing that even for pre-planned 3:00 a.m. raids targeting wanted gunmen, BWCs will not be deployed.

The ongoing high-profile trial of 25 alleged members of the Klansman Gang’s Tesha Miller faction resumed Thursday morning at the Supreme Court’s Home Circuit Division in downtown Kingston, with a emotional prosecution witness delivering a harrowing account of identifying one of the gang’s 2018 double murder victims. The chilling repetition “HE’S dead, he’s dead, Sir, he’s dead” has become the defining testimony of this week’s proceedings, encapsulating the trauma of a witness called to confirm the identity of Kemar Williams, one of two men killed in the February 24, 2018 attack in St Catherine’s Pineapple Lane.

The witness told the court she first received word of Williams’ murder shortly after 10 p.m. on the night of the shooting, but did not travel to the Spanish Town funeral home for formal identification until March 7, alongside a group of other acquaintances. Upon arrival, the party waited in a public holding area before a police officer escorted her to an interior examination room, where a medical examiner and another official awaited. Describing the grim space to the court, she noted “some bodies in there, like duppy, dead bodies” — a turn of phrase that drew quiet chuckles from several defendants seated in the courtroom.

When the sheet covering Williams’ remains was pulled back, the witness said she immediately recognized his features: his distinct full head of hair made identification unmistakable. The shock of seeing Williams’ body left her overcome with emotion, and court staff quickly advised her to step outside to regain her composure. “I was crying to see [Kemar] in that situation,” she told acting deputy director of public prosecutions, who is leading the prosecution’s case. When pressed to elaborate on what she meant by “that situation”, she again repeated the same shaken line, her gaze distant as she recounted the moment.

Williams’ killing is one of multiple homicides included in the 32-count indictment the Crown has brought against the accused gang members. The February 24 attack unfolded at a combined bar, retail shop and cookshop in Pineapple Lane, Bog Walk, St Catherine, leaving both Williams and Leon Burke — the establishment’s owner — dead, and a third bystander with life-threatening injuries. According to prosecution charges, Klansman faction leader Tesha Miller and co-accused Kirk Forrester are the masterminds behind the double shooting and subsequent attack, laid out in counts nine through 11 of the indictment.

Count nine charges Miller and Forrester with facilitating a serious criminal offense on behalf of a criminal organization for Burke’s murder; count ten brings the same charge for Williams’ killing; and count 11 accuses the pair of knowingly facilitating the intentional wounding of the third surviving victim, whose name has been withheld for privacy.

Earlier this week, the lead detective who initially handled the double murder investigation testified that when the case was reassigned to other investigators in 2019, he had not made any arrests nor identified any persons of interest in connection with the attack. The trial, which is being heard by Supreme Court Justice Dale Palmer without a jury, is scheduled to resume next Monday. Prosecutors have alleged the defendants are all active members of the violent Klansman Gang faction, linked to a string of murders, shootings and organized crime activities across Jamaica.