Jacho Entertainment: Forex transactions were legal

Ja­cho En­ter­tain­ment, the en­ter­tain­ment pro­mo­tion com­pa­ny of the One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val, says it con­duct­ed all for­eign ex­change trans­ac­tions for the con­cert through “le­gal, reg­u­lat­ed, and ver­i­fi­able fi­nan­cial chan­nels.”

In a state­ment on Wednes­day, the com­pa­ny is­sued a state­ment, say­ing, “At no time did Ja­cho En­ter­tain­ment en­gage in any form of unau­tho­rized or black-mar­ket cur­ren­cy ex­change.”

It comes as the Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Ju­nior Ben­jamin, con­firmed that the Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Branch (FIB) is prob­ing the source, method, and tim­ing of the US$950,000 pay­ment made to Adid­ja “Vy­bz Kar­tel” Palmer by a lo­cal pro­mot­er to ap­pear at last Sat­ur­day’s One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val.

How­ev­er, the state­ment re­butted say­ing, “Our com­pa­ny main­tains strict com­pli­ance with all laws and reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing for­eign

ex­change in the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, in­clud­ing Cen­tral Bank guide­lines.”

Ja­cho En­ter­tain­ment said while it re­mains ready to co­op­er­ate with any “le­git­i­mate in­quiry by the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties”, no for­mal re­port or com­plaint has been made to law en­force­ment con­cern­ing Ja­cho En­ter­tain­ment and the trans­fer of USD. It al­so said All pay­ments made in re­la­tion to the fes­ti­val, in­clud­ing the trans­fer of fund to Vy­bz Kar­tel were done via law­ful and trace­able

bank­ing pro­ce­dures. It went fur­ther in say­ing, ” There is no ba­sis in law or fact for any pre­sump­tion of wrong­do­ing sole­ly be­cause a

pri­vate sec­tor en­ti­ty suc­cess­ful­ly ac­cessed for­eign ex­change through prop­er le­gal chan­nels.”

The com­pa­ny said any in­ves­ti­ga­tion must be guid­ed by rea­son­able and prob­a­ble cause, not as­sump­tions. “The pub­lic in­ter­est is not served by en­gag­ing in a fish­ing ex­pe­di­tion that tar­gets a le­git­i­mate com­pa­ny with­out any for­mal al­le­ga­tion or ev­i­dence of im­pro­pri­ety,” the state­ment said.

Ja­cho En­ter­tain­ment said an­oth­er me­dia re­lease would be is­sued on Thurs­day “to an­swer ques­tions that has arisen in the pub­lic do­main.”