Did Jamaica's Finance Minister Dr. Nigel Clarke Use a Tax-Exempt Charity for Political Purposes? Can He?
SUBSCRIBER CONTENT
Last month, Jamaica’s Finance Minister Dr. Nigel Clark won praise for the country’s removal from the international grey list of the global watchdog Financial Action Task Force.
For the past four years, he’d been the ministerial point person on enhancing the country’s counter-terrorism financing and anti-money laundering regime, including getting parliament to pass legislation to strengthen monitoring of the nation’s non-profit sector.
But an 18º North probe has found that Dr. Clarke’s own tax-exempt charity deserves scrutiny.
His Growth and Opportunity Trust Ltd., set up to serve his North West St. Andrew constituency by providing “relief of poverty” and to “promote the advancement of good citizenship and community development,” has raised more than $91 million (US$631,644) in donations from unexplained sources between its inception in 2018 and 2023. It’s also spent about $84 million (US$581,460) over that same time period with little indication as to how that money was spent.
Of note is that the foundation’s two most lucrative hauls occurred during election years,