Janiel McEwan | The FID amendments: Independence won, but oversight lost in the shadows

Jamaica’s Parliament moved with unusual speed last week to amend the Financial Investigations Division Act, approving changes that the Government insists are essential to keeping the country in good standing on the global financial stage.

At first glance, the amendments appear largely technical. They loosen restrictions on how the Financial Investigations Division shares financial intelligence with local agencies and foreign partners. But beneath the surface of compliance language and international obligations lies a set of unresolved ambiguities that could weaken hard won safeguards against abuse of state power.

The Financial Investigations Division (FID) is not a peripheral agency. It sits at the core of Jamaica’s fight against money laundering, terrorist financing, and the flow of illicit funds that sustain corruption and organised crime.

Established in 2010, the FID functions as Jamaica’s Financial Intelligence Unit. It receives and analyses suspicious transaction reports from banks and other reporting entities, maintains sensitive financial databases, supports investigations, manages forfeited assets, and cooperates with foreign counterparts. Its work has contributed to major asset seizures and has been instrumental in keeping Jamaica off the most punitive international blacklists.

Yet since the 2017 mutual evaluation conducted by the Financial Action Task Force and its Caribbean affiliate, one concern has repeatedly surfaced. The FID’s operational independence was judged insufficient. Specifically, the requirement that the minister approve every memorandum of understanding or information sharing arrangement was seen as excessive political oversight, capable of causing delays and raising the perception of interference in intelligence operations.

The amendments, piloted by Finance Minister Fayval Williams and passed in the House on January 20, are intended to address that weakness. Ministerial approval is removed from the process. The chief technical director of the FID is now empowered to enter into information sharing arrangements independently, provided those arrangements are consistent with the Constitution and with government policy. The minister retains regulation-making authority, subject to affirmative parliamentary resolution, and confidentiality undertakings are referenced as part of the new framework.

Minister Williams defended the changes forcefully. She argued that they align Jamaica with Financial Action Task Force Recommendation 40 on international cooperation and are critical to maintaining membership in the Egmont Group, the global network that enables secure information exchange among Financial Intelligence Units. Without reform, she warned, Jamaica risks another poor showing in the upcoming fifth round mutual evaluation, with reputational damage and economic consequences that could affect investment flows, correspondent banking relationships, and remittances. Bureaucratic bottlenecks would continue to impede timely intelligence sharing, while the amendments, she maintained, actually reduce the risk of day-to-day political interference.

Those arguments are not without merit. Jamaica has spent years clawing its way out of enhanced monitoring, and a regression would be costly. Few would seriously contest the need to meet international standards or the importance of efficient intelligence cooperation in a globalised financial system.

However, the Opposition’s objections, raised principally by Mark Golding and Peter Bunting, deserve careful and sober consideration. They point to structural flaws that go beyond partisan disagreement and strike at the quality of the legislative framework itself.

Golding focused on the drafting of the amendments. The new provisions permit information sharing for purposes connected to enforcing laws administered by the receiving body. Yet the FID Act does not clearly define which laws the FID itself administers. Its mandate is expansive and somewhat diffuse. It investigates financial crimes, maintains intelligence databases, supports forfeiture proceedings, and coordinates with a wide range of domestic and international bodies. Does this remit extend to every predicate offence linked to money laundering, including tax evasion, fraud, lottery scamming, or corruption?

The absence of clear statutory boundaries invites inconsistent application and opens the door to legal challenges that could undermine prosecutions rather than strengthen them.

Even more troubling is the breadth of permissible disclosure. The amendments are not limited to information strictly necessary for the recipient agency to perform its functions. Golding questioned why the FID should be authorised to share information beyond necessity. That concern is well founded. Financial intelligence is among the most intrusive forms of state held data. Transaction histories can expose medical conditions through insurance payments, political affiliations through donations, family relationships through remittances, and intimate aspects of private life that citizens reasonably expect to remain confidential. In such a context, necessity and proportionality are not bureaucratic technicalities. They are constitutional safeguards.

Bunting highlighted a deeper contradiction at the heart of the Government’s claim of enhanced independence. While ministerial approval is removed, the amendments tether FID agreements to compliance with government policy, a term left entirely undefined. In practice, policy can be articulated through informal correspondence, internal directives, or unpublished guidance.

A minister could issue a quiet instruction shaping how and with whom information is shared, without parliamentary scrutiny or public awareness. As Bunting observed, this does not eliminate the risk of political influence. It simply relocates it from the visible front end of approval to the opaque back end of policy control.

These are not hypothetical anxieties. Jamaica’s Data Protection Act reached its fifth anniversary in 2025, enshrining principles of lawful processing, data minimisation, purpose limitation, and accountability. Financial intelligence often involves personal data collected without the knowledge or consent of the individual concerned. Expanding the scope and speed of sharing, especially with foreign partners whose privacy regimes may be weaker, heightens the risk of conflict with those protections. Without explicit statutory safeguards, citizens are left to trust that discretion will always be exercised wisely.

The amendments passed, as majority governments invariably ensure. But legislative speed should never be confused with legislative quality. Compliance achieved at the expense of clarity and accountability is fragile and often short lived.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR COURSE CORRECTION

This moment need not end in regret. There remains space for constructive refinement that preserves international compliance while strengthening democratic oversight.

First, definitions must be clarified urgently. The minister should table regulations within months that explicitly identify the laws within the FID’s remit and require that any disclosure be demonstrably necessary and proportionate to the recipient’s statutory functions. Fishing expeditions must be expressly excluded.

Second, confidentiality obligations must be made robust and universal. Every information sharing arrangement should include binding undertakings that meet or exceed Jamaica’s own standards, with clear penalties for breach. Where domestic sharing extends beyond core financial crime enforcement, independent oversight should be retained, whether through the Integrity Commission or judicial authorisation.

Third, the backdoor of policy influence must be closed. Any government policy guiding FID agreements should be published, tabled in Parliament, and subject to negative resolution. Secret directives have no place in a modern constitutional democracy.

Fourth, Parliament should establish structured oversight. A bipartisan select committee, with members subject to security clearance, could review FID operations annually. Comparable models exist in jurisdictions such as Canada and Australia. Such oversight would enhance public trust without compromising sensitive investigations.

Finally, the FID Act and the Data Protection Act must be explicitly integrated. Cross referencing provisions should make clear that FID disclosures are subject to data protection principles, except where a narrowly defined national security exception applies and is independently certified.

Jamaica cannot afford to become an international pariah in the fight against financial crime. But neither can it afford to erode democratic checks in the name of efficiency. The Financial Investigations Division performs indispensable work, often away from public view. History shows that unchecked power is most dangerous when exercised in the shadows.

These amendments grant the FID greater autonomy. That autonomy must now be matched with responsibility, transparency, and enforceable safeguards. The upcoming mutual evaluation will judge effectiveness. Jamaicans will judge fairness. Parliament should revisit these issues in committee before the ink fully dries and ensure that the balance between security and liberty is not only asserted, but secured.

- Janiel McEwan is an Economic Consultant. Email feedback to janielmcewan17@gmail.com and columns@gleanerjm.com