The numbers tell a story of rapid mobilisation. By 31 December 2024, 1,018 Jamaican attorneys had onboarded to the Financial Investigations Division’s goAML reporting portal—an explosive 329 per cent jump on the previous year and a clear signal that the bar is now firmly inside the nation’s anti-money-laundering perimeter.
The wave of enlistments was not accidental. A tight three-way push by the Financial Intelligence Unit, the General Legal Council, and the FID transformed registration from a compliance chore into a professional imperative. Their combined outreach delivered the single-largest year-on-year surge since goAML’s local debut.
More reporters, more intelligence
Attorneys were not alone. Overall, 1,696 entities—banks, cambios, casinos, dealers, and designated non-financial businesses—were active on the portal at year-end, a 118 per cent expansion versus 2023. That broader net produced a record 112,412 suspicious and threshold transaction reports in 2024, up from 101,715 in 2023 and 89,760 in 2022. Each submission feeds directly into the FID’s analytics engine, tightening the dragnet around illicit cash flows.
New playbook for asset seizures
Behind the data, the FID and its Asset Recovery Agency quietly modernised their playbook. Effective 31 May, a comprehensive procedural manual and standard operating procedures for seizing everything—except digital currencies—went into force. The results are beginning to show: multiple enforcement actions during the year culminated in property disposals worth J $21.7 million, cash that now supports ongoing investigations.
Why it matters
- Regulatory velocity
A near-fourfold rise in attorney participation compresses what once took years into months, accelerating Jamaica toward full AML/CFT maturity. - Data gravity
More reporters equal richer intelligence. The FID’s case files now arrive pre-loaded with transactional telemetry, reducing investigative blind spots. - Asset-backed deterrence
With fresh SOPs and real cash recovered, criminals face a higher probability of losing both freedom and fortune.
In short, Jamaica’s compliance machinery is no longer warming up—it’s in high gear. The legal sector’s mass migration onto goAML is the latest proof point that the island’s financial crime defences are scaling just as aggressively as the threats they are built to neutralise.
