The investment scheme, LewFam, which joined with Olint Corporation in fighting the Financial Services Com-mission, has ties to a church group.
And another church-related investment club, whose prospectus to potential investors the Financial Gleaner obtained, is offering monthly returns of between 12 per cent and 16 per cent on investments ranging from US$1,000 to US$250,000.
The club calls itself FX1 Finance Club and has at least three pastors listed as board members.
Major Neil Lewis, who is part of the Family Life Minsitries, would not discuss LewFam's activities, saying it remained under the FSC's 'cease and desist' order, but the church-based investment scheme, is modelled off David Smith's Olint club.
These developments highlight a growing involvement of churches in increasingly controversial areas of business and finance, but which their leaders say is part of their mandate to ensure the well-being of both the spiritual and physical man.
So much has the idea caught on in theological circles that the Caribbean Graduate School of Theology is introducing a course in foreign exchange trading, under its MBA programme.
The inaugural seminar, which is to be presented by chartered accountant Evadnie Byfield-Sterling who works at the Bank of Jamaica, is set for Saturday.
Since David Smith's investment club, through which he raises capital to play the the foreign exchange market, high-yield investment schemes have been a source of deep controversy while inspiring copycat schemes.
For instance, Olint has resisted attempts by FSC to have it register as a trader in equities, a issue that is now before the courts for resolution.
Additionally, the FSC has raised questions about the capacity of Olint, and other investment clubs, to offer returns of upwards of 100 per cent a year and has been on a campaign warning people of the dangers of Ponzi schemes and high-risk investments.
While critics of the FSC insist that there is no rule governing the establishment of private partnership/investment clubs, the regulator bases in insistence on the requirement of the Securities Act that all persons soliciting or conducting securities business in Jamaica to be authorised by the commission.
But the controversy around Olint has apparently not dampened the appetite of Jamaicans to participate in these schemes,
For example, Olint was followed in the market by CashPlus, which apparently has been raking hundreds of millions from hundreds of small investors, offering interest on the cash of over 10 per cent per month. CashPlus appears to have pumped much of the cash into real estate and other businesses, but is yet to explain its ability to pay its offered returns.
It, too, is at loggerheads over whether it needs the approval of the FSC to maintain its operations.
These quarrels have not, it seems, damped the spirit of evangelical preachers to establish similar schemes to build wealth for themselves, their churches and parishioners.
Recently, Bishop Peter Morgan of City Life Ministries told The Gleaner that he and other Christian friends had created a partnership to investment, but drew a distinction between what they did and organisation like CashPlus.
Additionally, the Caribbean Graduate School of Theology, which trains evangelical preachers, says its introduction of the foreign exchange course is based on the demand of its students.
"We are trying to move out of the periphery to the centre as to understand the various issues and articulate them correctly, thus playing a more vibrant role in national development," said Dr. Anthony Oliver, the school's principal.
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