Opposition Leader Mark Golding is calling for a commission of inquiry into the SSL fraud scandal.

I’m Kalilah Reynolds, financial journalist and educator based in Jamaica.

So President of the People’s National Party, Mark Golding, was on Taking Stock last week.  He called for a commission of inquiry into the downfall of investment firm Stocks and Securities Limited, SSL, and the multi-million dollar fraud that impacted dozens of investors, including Olympic Champion, Usain Bolt. 

A Commission of Inquiry is an official review of events or actions of public importance. And what happened at SSL is definitely of public importance. 

According to investigators, over 30 million US dollars was stolen from 200 customers at SSL in multiple fraud schemes dating back to 2006. 

And as Golding pointed out, there are still several lingering questions, starting with the failures of the industry’s regulator, the Financial Services Commission, FSC.

“The FSC I think was not given the necessary, strong independent board that was required to implement the regulatory regime which exists. The real problem with SSL was that the regulator essentially dropped the ball they did not follow through with the necessary measures of enforcement which the law provided them,”  Golding said.

He noted more clarification is needed on why the directions that [SSL] was issued were “essentially lifted when there was no basis for thinking that SSL had improved its performance”.

And that last question is a fair point. It was one of the many unanswered questions that journalists asked then Executive Director at the FSC, Everton McFarlane during that infamous press conference a year ago. 

So Golding is saying a commission of inquiry would be the best way to get to the truth and avoid a repeat of another SSL scandal. 

These commissions are usually conducted independently.  We’ve had a couple of inquiries in Jamaica, with varying degrees of success. 

Probably the most notable is the FINSAC commission, which examined the financial meltdown of the 1990s. The first FINSAC commission meetings were in 2009, 15 years ago, and we STILL haven’t gotten the report from that. So we still don’t know what the commissioners found and what recommendations they made.

There was also an inquiry into the 2010 West Kingston incursion to capture Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke. That commission happened in 2015. The report was completed and the commission did make recommendations, but only some of them have been implemented.

But despite the delays in reporting and implementation, the good thing about a commission of inquiry is that it is public.  The media covers it extensively, so the things that went wrong are aired out in the public domain. 

So it could be a good way to get some answers into what really happened at SSL.

And that’s the bottom line.