FIU Director Reacts to High Court’s Ruling on C.I.B. Money Seizure

In October, the government lost a legal claim brought by Caribbean International Brewery Limited regarding the confiscation of three point two million dollars by the Financial Intelligence Unit over a year ago. The High Court ruled that proper procedures were not followed and that the money should have been returned within seventy-two hours. The case originated from a police raid at C.I.B.’s Carmelita Village compound in October 2022, where the cash was seized under a warrant. While the judgement is a symbolic victory, as the funds were already returned, Caribbean International Brewery plans to sue the government for damages, citing operational contraction and reputational damage due to the wrongful detention of the money.  Today, both FIU Director Leni Ysaguirre McGann and Police Commissioner Chester Williams reacted to the judgement, with Ysaguirre McGann saying that the FIU’s investigation will continue.

Leni Ysaguirre McGann

Leni Ysaguirre McGann, Director, F.I.U.

“That case was an application to detain the cash and what happened was that the FIU returned back to court having obtained an initial amount of time to detain the cash to pursue its investigation. So we were not at the stages yet where we were asking the court to forfeit the cash. We were still asking the court for additional time to pursue our investigation. Of course, for us, it was important to keep the cash detained to ensure that there wasn’t the flight of that asset because cash is fungible. So that as our investigation matures, we could have either pursued two options to bring criminal proceedings or to actually bring a civil cash forfeiture proceedings. There is, prior to the Civil Asset Recovery Act, provisions for the forfeiture of cash, but only cash. So this legislation actually expands the ability to forfeit assets in a civil manner, meaning without a criminal conviction, to other types of assets. So in that case, we still continue our investigation, however, we do not have the benefit of having that cash on, available.”

Chester Williams

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
“As we go along, we do learn. I always believe that in every bad event, there is always a silver line. And so, we just need to search for that silver line and make sure that in future events, should there be any, that all those procedures that the court highlighted went wrong, that we will be able to ensure that we don’t have reoccurrence of those.”