A STAGGERING?RISE in financial crime has forced the Royal Barbados Police Force to expand the squad probing those cases and also seek foreign help.
Commissioner of Police Darwin Dottin told a Press briefing yesterday that investigators for the first quarter of this year were dealing with cases including fraud within institutions, credit card and cheque fraud totalling more than $1.5 million.
The workload of investigators had increased to such an extent that he had to expand the Fraud Squad team.
“I have 17 officers working on financial crimes and we have taken the decision that we need to improve the skills in the financial crimes section,” he added.
UK experts
“We are working very closely with some UK experts. The British High Commission here has kindly made some experts available to us to improve the skills of those officers who are working in this section,” Dottin added.
Assistance was also coming from Deloitte, the international accounting firm.
“They (Deloitte) work very closely with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police of Canada, in dealing with some of these issues and they are going to be offering those officers some specialised training.
“There are difficult financial cases where we will need the assistance of forensic accountants, and that is an area that Deloitte has indicated to us that they can provide some assistance,” he said.“We are being proactive in this area. I think that an organisation like ours, in order to be creditable had to respond to this matter,” he said.
Confidence tricks
Financial crimes may involve fraud (cheque fraud, credit card fraud, mortgage fraud, medical fraud, corporate fraud, securities fraud (including insider trading), bank fraud, payment (point of sale) fraud, healthcare fraud); theft; scams or confidence tricks; tax evasion; bribery; embezzlement; identity theft; money laundering; and forgery and counterfeiting, including the production of counterfeit money and consumer goods.
The commissioner also responded to a report from the United States State Department, that mentioned a bright human rights picture for Barbados but alleged there were occasional complaints about police beatings.
Taking steps
Dottin said there were taking steps that would put an end so such reports by recording interviews of suspects at the station.
“I hope that in the foreseeable future that we would have a regime for the recording of interviews with the suspects and this would bring to an end these constant allegations of ill-treatment of suspects in our custody,” he added.
