The Usain Bolt/SSL fraud scandal takes an interesting turn.

Author: S. Jeffery

Business man and investor, Zachary Harding,
who was CEO of SSL from 2019 to 2022.

 Wah gwaan peepul?! How unu doin' todeh? 

I have some more info on the Usain Bolt/SSL fraud scandal. 

Now as I said earlier, Bolt had sent a letter to the directors of Stocks and Securities Limited demanding that dem sen' back 'im money. Well on Saturday, January 21, 2023, former CEO of the company, Zachary Harding, claimed that he was not aware that Bolt had an account with the company.  

Yes! A dat di man seh! Him seh him neva know seh Bolt was doing bizniz wid di company weh him did a manage! 

Den any ting cyan really guh suh?!

To cover his tracks Mr. Harding claims upon hearing about the Bolt case he consulted with Bolt's management team who told him that former SSL wealth advisor, Jean Panton, the alleged thief, was the sole manager investing Bolt's money. 

Bwoy it really nuh look good at all. But memba mi seh Ms. Panton neva put Bolt name pon di list. Was she den withholding information. No know sah. 

Here is a screenshot of the official statement from Mr Harding about the matter:

Yuh seet? Di man seh him neva did at work at SSL in 2017 when the FSC said the company had issues. Di man seh him start work inna 2019, two (2) years before him was CEO. 

The next thing that had many Jamaicans upset was his claim that he was not aware of the level of impropriety at the company. He claims under his watch the company was improving and any issue that was brought to his attention was dealt with quickly. In an interview with Nationwide News Network (NNN), Harding says:

"We never lost the license when I was there. It was not of the nature and gravity that would have caused us to lose our license. There were times when there were serious matters and those were addressed quickly and with extra effort, and we set out to try and improve the things that needed improving. We report to the FSC on a regular basis, sometimes on a weekly basis if they needed us to be reporting to them so often and tracking our improvement and progress. You know we went through the items and corrected them as we went along, and then we would have gone through regular external audits as any financial institution would."

He told NNN that no case of misappropriation of funds was brought to his attention. Harding was CEO of the company from September 2019 to June 2022. 

On the matter of Bolt, Harding says:

"Usain Bolt's name never came up in a meeting that I was in. It was never mentioned to me that he was an account holder at SSL, neither as an individual person in his name or in a company name. I've since learned that apparently there was a company that had an account at SSL that money was being deposited in, but even that company had never heard of the name. Somebody's stature of a Usain Bolt, people in the business, we would have...they would have been talking and saying, "Yeh man Usain Bolt!"...and with the amount of money he had invested in the entity over a long period of time that would have accumulated, he would have been one of the investors, who had one of the top investments accounts, and then I would have now, I know... I along with the senior team would have been looking at that list and saying, "Wow, there's this account that has all of this money in there, now let's reach out to him, to make sure he's happy". 

So he's basically saying that if he knew of Bolt as an investor he would have personally spoken to the big man, to ensure he was satisfied with his return on investment (ROI) and find out if there is anything else he could do to make the former elite athlete happy.

Bwoy peepul. Mi nuh know weh fi seh. The plot thickens. If it is true seh Jean was indeed Bolt's advisor then, and Harding neva know nutten bout Bolt it seems that Jean had a little help from higher ups to keep di secret. Cause as much as she is a senior manager she a guh need cooperation  from some bigger execs to keep a lid on things. 

So many questions!

So who was helping Miss Jean?

Where in the world is Bolt's money? Is it still in Jamaica? 

Weh dem do wid it?

There are allegations that members of the current government administration have ties with the company. So far those are mere allegations, but it does beg the question as to why the company was still allowed to run with the claims of mismanagement. As I revealed in the previous featured post, a report by the FSC of issues within the company was made way back in 2010, two (2) years before Bolt did business with them. Then in 2017, another report was published which made damning revelations about the company's mismanagement. 

Couldn't the license have been suspended then? If it had, maybe Bolt would still have his money now.

Hey guys, thanks for reading this article. If you find this content interesting, please like and share this article, and please leave a comment so we can work through these puzzles together.  😊

Please note Jamaican dialect in Italics.