Chug IT promoter charged in $222-million fraud

Andrew Wright, promoter of the popular parties Chug IT and French Connection, was yesterday arrested in connection with a multimillion-dollar fraud racket at the Institute of Sports (INSPORTS).

Wright was the financial controller at the state-run body before being dismissed in 2017 after the board of directors accused him of abandoning his job.

The popular promoter has been charged jointly with Rudolph Barnes and Oneil Hope after the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency (MOCA) said it uncovered a $222-million racket at INSPORTS. The acts were allegedly committed between 2011 and 2017.

Wright, Barnes and Hope are alleged to have been part of a team of former employees of INSPORTS who wrote, signed and encashed fraudulent cheques for payees who were neither employees nor contracted workers of the entity. The suspected fraud and other irregularities were detected by INSPORTS in 2017 during an examination of their financial records. The matter was then reported to MOCA triggering an investigation.

The three have been charged with various offences including conspiracy to defraud, acquisition, use and possession of criminal property, engaging in transactions involving criminal property and larceny as a servant.

“These arrests are the first set of arrests as MOCA currently has warrants out for several other individuals,” said Basil Jarrett, director of communications at MOCA.

Jarrett said that the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Financial Investigations Division, and Tax Administration Jamaica all assisted with the probe.

“These types of investigations are complex undertakings requiring thoroughness and collaboration”, he said, “and so it took a meticulous approach, led by MOCA’s investigative teams, to examine all the leads and uncover all the evidence required to make these arrests and bring these charges”.