The Jamaica Mortgage Bank (JMB) has been hit with a $100-million lawsuit along with claims of unfair dismissal and defamation by the legal team for banker Dalton Myrie.

Myrie was employed as a loans officer to the State-run entity from 1999 to March 2015.

He was arrested on allegations of using his position at the bank corruptly. However, Myrie was in late 2016 freed by the court and all charges against him dismissed due to lack of evidence.

The lawsuit claim form says Myrie was the subject of a sting operation despite him having an impeccable record, and that he was unjustly charged for alleged corrupt execution of his duties.

The ex-JMB employee insists that he was badgered into resigning from his job following his arrest and despite him being freed due to lack of evidence.

The former loans officer states in his claim that the reason for his arrest was that a senior executive at the Mortgage Bank held a grudge against him due to his role in revealing to its board of directors that the senior executive had threatened a JMB client, causing the executive to be disciplined and the scope of his duties reduced.

The former JMB employee is asking the court to order that the bank pay him aggravated damages and bear the burden of his legal costs. Court documents disclose that Myrie is also alleging that several senior officials at the bank used their influence to force a developer into becoming their operative for the sting operation which resulted in his arrest.

The lawsuit says the developer confessed in court that he joined the conspiracy to arrest Myrie because he was coerced to do so by a senior official at the Mortgage Bank.

Radio Jamaica Limited has been named as the first defendant in the lawsuit due to what Myrie’s lawyer, Robert Collie, has outlined in court documents was the media house’s reportedly inaccurate report of the circumstances which led to his client’s arrest.

RJR and the JMB have both submitted documents to the court insisting that they acted appropriately.

The JMB says it neither admits nor denies Myrie’s assertions of defamation, “save and except that it is denied that at the material time the claimant was a morally upright character”.

The bank pointed to a statement in Myrie’s claim that the principal of a JMB client had been indebted to him at the time when the individual sought a loan from the JMB.

“The second defendant will contend that this conflict of interest was never revealed to the second defendant and the failure or refusal of the claimant to do so contradicts his alleged exemplary work ethics,” the bank said in its response to the claim.

According to Myrie, at the “behest of agents and employees” of the JMB he accepted $50,000 from the client under the impression that it was partial payment from the individual for a long-standing debt owed to him.

Meanwhile, the JMB has also refuted that any of its employees or agents provided any information, defamatory or otherwise, regarding Myrie to any media entity.

The claim of wrongful dismissal has also been rebutted on the grounds that Myrie terminated his own employment by resigning.

“Even if a claim for wrongful termination, albeit denied, is proven, the claimant is not entitled to damages in the amount being claimed,” Donna Samuels Stone, attorney for the JMB, argued in court documents.

The bank in its 29-point response says it denies “each and every” allegation contained in Myrie’s particulars of claim except for those it has expressly admitted.

The first hearing in the lawsuit is scheduled for later this year.