DSS CEO claims JMMB business account closed – Trinidad Guardian

Drugs Sou Sou (DSS) CEO Ker­ron Clarke has called for a boy­cott of JMMB, fol­low­ing no­ti­fi­ca­tion from the bank that they will no longer do busi­ness him.

Clarke was re­port­ed­ly in­struct­ed by the bank that his ac­count had been closed on Fri­day and he sub­se­quent­ly re­ceived a cheque for the amount with­in the ac­count.

Fol­low­ing this com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Clarke took to so­cial me­dia where he called on DSS sup­port­ers to with­draw their mon­ey from JMMB from Mon­day.

In a Face­book Live just be­fore mid­day on Sat­ur­day, Isha Wells, the own­er of an ad­ver­tis­ing agency and a ra­dio pre­sen­ter, ad­vised DSS sup­port­ers to main­tain or­der, as she said they had to be strate­gic at this time.

Ac­cus­ing the au­thor­i­ties of want­i­ng to shut down the DSS sys­tem and re­turn young black peo­ple to beg­ging for a ten days, Wells de­scribed it as a “fi­nan­cial move­ment” which had el­e­vat­ed the low­er stra­ta of so­ci­ety, which was now un­will­ing to be re­turned to that po­si­tion.

Re­fer­ring to Clarke as a sol­dier, busi­ness­man and fam­i­ly man who had no crim­i­nal his­to­ry, Wells ques­tioned where and how he was sup­posed to live now.

Call­ing out the Gov­ern­ment for its si­lence on the mat­ter, Wells de­mand­ed clar­i­ty from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and oth­er par­lia­men­tar­i­ans.

In a state­ment on Sat­ur­day, JMMB Chief Mar­ket­ing Of­fi­cer and Chief Re­tail Of­fi­cer Lisa Maria Alexan­der said the in­sti­tu­tion al­ways seeks “to en­sure that in­tegri­ty, eth­i­cal and reg­u­la­to­ry stan­dards gov­ern the man­age­ment of all our re­la­tion­ships with our clients.”

While not di­rect­ly re­fer­ring to DSS, Alexan­der added, “We are clear too, that our man­age­ment of our bank­ing/fi­nan­cial ser­vices must be an in­di­ca­tor of our ac­count­abil­i­ty and oblig­a­tion to pro­tect­ing the in­ter­ests of all our clients and stake­hold­ers. At JMMB, your best in­ter­est is at the heart of all we do.”

Dur­ing his so­cial me­dia state­ment, Clarke said DSS op­er­a­tions were now at a stand­still fol­low­ing a court or­der on Thurs­day which gave the po­lice au­thor­i­ty to hold for three months, an es­ti­mat­ed $7.77 mil­lion they seized from the DSS last week. How­ev­er, Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob told Guardian Me­dia that the amount seized dur­ing the raid last Tues­day was $6.4 mil­lion. The mon­ey was seized un­der the Pro­ceeds of Crimes Act.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith re­turned to T&T on Thurs­day to over­see the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Two of­fi­cers from the Roy­al Bar­ba­dos Po­lice Force are in the coun­try to as­sist with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and have been sworn in as a TTPS sergeant and su­per­in­ten­dent, while a third in­ves­ti­ga­tor from the Unit­ed King­dom ar­rived last week­end. The mat­ter in­volves the seizure of $22 mil­lion in cash which had been found in the house where DSS op­er­ates at Kath­leen Warn­er Dri­ve, La Hor­quet­ta, on Sep­tem­ber 22 and re­turned the fol­low­ing day.

An in­ves­ti­ga­tion was launched in­to that mat­ter and on Oc­to­ber 16, four po­lice of­fi­cers were sus­pend­ed and 10 oth­ers trans­ferred un­der or­ders from Grif­fith.

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