DRAFTING orders for the development of legislation to make the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency an independent body is currently being worked on, according to MOCA head Colonel Desmond Edwards.

Edwards, who was a guest at the Jamaica Observer Press Club last week, said that drafting of the legislation should start within a month. He said Cabinet had in April approved the drafting of the legislation.

An important aspect to be examined is whether to give the agency power to prosecute its own cases without a fiat from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

“We have asked that we be given the capacity to prosecute our own matters,” said Edwards, MOCA’s director general.

Prior to becoming an agency, the MOCA was a task force within the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF). It became an agency on August 3, 2014 after merging with the JCF’s Anti-Corruption Branch.

The focus of the new agency was expanded to include the facilitators of crime, including corrupt police officers, lawyers, bankers and family members, who knowingly accommodate or provide support to criminals and corrupt officials.

Edwards explained last week that it was important for MOCA to be an independent investigative agency.

“An independent MOCA would be a more effective MOCA,” said Edwards, who is on secondment to MOCA from the Jamaica Defence Force.

Currently, MOCA investigators are members of the JCF. Legislation would give the investigators of an independent MOCA the power of arrest. Police officers who are currently part of the agency will have to give up their post in the Jamaica Constabulary Force and be rehired in the independent MOCA, Edwards said.

He said that MOCA has been modelled off the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency, which has a similar mandate to MOCA’s.

“That entity has separate legislation that empowers its operation. They have powers of arrest, powers to search… MOCA would have to be so empowered by law. The head of that entity has total operational control of what that entity does. He doesn’t have a higher authority save and except for oversight committee,” said Edwards.

A steering committee, led by Permanent Secretary in the ministry, Major General Stewart Saunders (retired), and involving officers of the JCF and the JDF, oversees the policy implementation of the agency.

Edwards said: “In our context it is also important that we have this kind of independence, particularly if we are going to look at corruption across the board. We need to be independent in how we are allowed to conduct our business.”