‘I believed in David’ – Olint investors losing hope

‘I believed in David’ – Olint investors losing hope

Published :Jamaica-Gleaner
Sunday | February 8, 2009

Tyrone Reid, Staff Reporter

THE RECENT arrest of Olint boss David Smith has shaken the faith of some investors who remained faithful to the faltering investment scheme and their embattled financial ‘messiah’.

Last Thursday, Smith was arrested and charged in the Turks and Caicos Islands following a probe into fraud allegations against him.

An investor, who requested anonymity, told The Sunday Gleaner that he really thought the charismatic Smith could take them to the financial Promised Land. “I believed in David,” he said.

The investor, who is a prominent businessman, said Smith was like the Pied Piper of the financial world.

Never asked for money

According to the businessman, it was the investors who sought out Smith. “I don’t remember David ever asking a man for money. He is like the Pied Piper – people just following and want to give him money.”

The investor added, “I approached him (and) if you are talking to him, just socially, you almost want to give him more.” The investor said he “took a big lick” because he had a lot of money in Olint when it closed down.

While admitting some disappointment over his loss, the investor said the writing was already on the wall. “I knew the risk going in. … You (are) taking a chance. We were all warned with what the FSC said … so what are you going to do?”

Not easy for investors

While he has counted his losses and is moving on, the businessman said that it might not be so easy for other investors who mortgaged their homes to get the cash to place in Olint’s foreign-exchange trading club.

The businessman claimed that Smith’s family members and close friends, as well as “a lot of churches” invested in Olint.

After Olint’s offices were raided by the Financial Services
Commission (FSC) in March 2006, Wayne Smith, the Olint boss’ brother, said the church community was praying without ceasing for his sibling.

Not finished

Bishop Peter Morgan of City Life Ministries told The Sunday Gleaner that although Smith has been arrested and charged, it is not finished until lady justice sings.

“Until the court makes its judgement, I could not make that judgement,” he said.

The bishop said members of the Church, who believed in Smith, are still on their knees. “We have intensified our prayers definitely for him as a person, and for the entire forex movement,” Morgan said.

The clergyman said he still believed “in the sincerity of David Smith”.

Movement can be saved

Smith’s arrest might be a defining blow against alternate investment schemes but Bishop Morgan believes the movement can be saved.

“The whole thing can still be redeemed and that is what I pray towards.” Morgan also said the Government could have handled the alternate investment schemes differently, attempting to regulate them, rather than forcing them to lock shop.

While admitting that he lost money when Olint crumbled, Bishop Morgan said some of his “friends and colleagues suffered more – mostly churchfolk, both locally and overseas,” he said.

tyrone.reid@gleanerjm.com

Police await formal local complaints against Smith

Published: Saturday | February 7, 2009
By the jamaica Gleaner

Local police investigators say they are yet to receive any formal complaints from Jamaica against Olint boss, David Smith.

On Thursday, Smith was arrested and charged in the Turks and Caicos Islands following a probe into fraud allegations against him.

Smith is on charges of theft, false accounting and uttering false documents.

He has since been granted bail and is to appear in court in August.

Head of the Major Investigation Task Force, Assistant Commissioner Les Green, says investigators have received complaints from investors outside the Jamaican jurisdiction.

He says the local complaints have not been “of substance”.

“We would ask if any one feels that they have been defrauded and that they invested money in Jamaica, that they contact the Fraud Squad.”

Deputy Commissioner of Police in the Turks and Caicos Islands, Hubert Hughes, says Smith’s arrest follows months of investigations.

The Turks police are also not ruling out coming to Jamaica as part of their investigation.

In the meantime, the Turks authorities are continuing to examine the documents they seized from Smith’s house and offices last year.

The developments in the Olint case have raised further doubts that investors will be able to recoup the millions of dollars they placed in the failed financial investment scheme.

NCB-Olint suit set for trial next March

NCB-Olint suit set for trial next March
published: .jamaica-gleaner.com
Friday | October 3, 2008

The civil suit in which National Commercial Bank (NCB) is seeking to close the accounts of investment club Olint Corporation Ltd has been set for trial on March 9, 2009, in the Supreme Court.

The trial date was set Wednesday when lawyers representing the parties attended a case management conference at the Supreme Court.

NCB is seeking to close the accounts because it is contending that Olint has not complied with certain requests. One of the requests is to provide an audited financial statement.

Olint is contesting the suit and has filed several allegations against the bank. An application was made Wednesday to consolidate the suit which NCB filed against Olint boss, David Smith, and his wife Tracey.

NCB is seeking to close the personal accounts of the Smiths because it says based on a Supreme Court ruling, it does not want to continue to operate accounts for persons who are associated with Olint.

The application to consolidate the suits has been set for November 11.

Parties should repay Cash Plus, Olint

Parties should repay Cash Plus, Olint
published: jamaica-gleaner.com Thursday | September 11, 2008

It is the first anniversary of the 2007 general elections and the nation is in the dark about the source of funds and the sums used to finance the campaigns. In this age, in a civilised country with the threat of money laundering, civil society sees no evil in the present secrecy arrangements.

I read in a Sunday Herald publication that the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the People’s National Party (PNP) admitted that they accepted money from Cash Plus and Olint to finance their election campaign. The respective spokesmen declined to disclose the sums.

It is strange that the then governing party, PNP, would accept money from Cash Plus and Olint when its own minister of finance was so strident against these two companies and there was a cease and desist order against one company. The PNP was saying one thing and doing another. The JLP would have information about these companies that ordinary Jamaicans would not have. I was made aware from September/October last year of some of the things that have since proven true. To accept donations from Cash Plus and Olint was worse than accepting money from Trafigura.

Government regulatory agency

It is amazing that the Financial Services Commission (FSC), a Government regulatory agency, was warning Jamaicans about doing business with these and other entities that do not disclose their financial records and are not registered with the FSC, yet our two main political parties were reaping benefits from them. If it were in the United Kingdom or the United States of America, the leaders who received the money and had knowledge of it would have resigned. In addition, the present minister of finance, when he was Opposition spokesman for finance, gave an endorsement of such enterprises in his budget speech. Some church leaders were principals and participants in foreign exchange trading clubs. A football entity headed by a former prime minister negotiated a sponsorship deal with Cash Plus and it was expected that ordinary Jamaicans should know that Cash Plus was little more than a pyramid scheme?

Investors have been called foolish. However, a Gleaner editorial (August 13) stated that one foreign currency trader said that only 20 per cent of the funds would be traded and the other 80 per cent would be placed in safer investments.

Financial statements

It is sad that investors are being chided for not looking at or seeking financial statements. However, persons can look at the same financial statements and come up with different conclusions. For example, some people believe that, based on the balance sheet, the Brazilian company Infiniti, that will be taking over the sugar industry and part of Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica, cannot deliver, while others examining the same balance sheet believe they can. Did not Michael Lee Chin examine the balance sheet before he lost hundreds of millions in Trinidad? Didn’t Joe Lewis examine the Bear Stearns balance sheet before he lost billions in that company? The truth is every investment carries risk, some more than others.

Investors were gullible

It is fashionable not only to claim that investors were gullible, but also greedy. There were certain elements of both. However, there are persons who tried those things because of hardships and the Government should be sensitive to those who might lose their homes. In addition, foreign-currency trading has two systemic problems. One is rogue traders and two is that the trading platform allows persons to trade up to five times the money he or she has. Both need to stop and make foreign currency a less-risky business.

In the meantime, the JLP and the PNP should return the monies they received from Cash Plus and Olint for the elections. This could be used to help repay the ‘foolish’ investors.

Devon Dick is pastor of the Boulevard Baptist Church and author of Rebellion to Riot, the church in nation building. Feedback may be sent to columns@gleanerjm.com