For the past decade, in­tel­li­gence units have been gath­er­ing in­for­ma­tion on the ex­pan­sion of the Chi­nese Tri­ad, a high­ly or­gan­ised crim­i­nal unit which has spread its ten­ta­cles through­out the Caribbean.Sources say the Caribbean's Im­ple­men­ta­tion Agency for Crime and Se­cu­ri­ty (IM­PACS) has been work­ing with lo­cal se­cu­ri­ty in­tel­li­gence agen­cies, track­ing the ac­tiv­i­ties of Chi­nese crim­i­nal car­tels in the re­gion since 2006.In T&T, pre­vi­ous Gov­ern­ments were cau­tioned about a pos­si­ble up­surge in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty dri­ven by Asian gangs which have been in­fil­trat­ing the re­gion.

How­ev­er, no con­nec­tion was made be­tween that de­vel­op­ment and the re­cent huge in­flux of Chi­nese labour­ers in­to the coun­try to work on large scale con­struc­tion projects, in­clud­ing con­struc­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter's of­fi­cial res­i­dence and the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA). Un­der the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion, ties with the Chi­nese Gov­ern­ment are still strong. Chi­na con­tin­ues to in­vest mil­lions of dol­lars in aid and soft loans to T&T and oth­er Caribbean Gov­ern­ments (see side bar).

Chi­nese Am­bas­sador to T&T Yang Youm­ing has dis­tanced him­self from re­ports of Asian crim­i­nal gangs op­er­at­ing in this coun­try, say­ing he had no knowl­edge of those de­vel­op­ments.He ex­pressed con­cern that such re­ports were hurt­ing the im­age of the Chi­nese in T&T.How­ev­er, a se­nior in­tel­li­gence source said moves by a pre­vi­ous Gov­ern­ment to en­cour­age Chi­nese im­mi­gra­tion fa­cil­i­tat­ed fur­ther ex­pan­sion of the Chi­nese Tri­ad, which dis­guis­es its il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties un­der a cov­er of glob­al com­mer­cial­ism.

While the Tri­ad grows, hun­dreds of Chi­nese restau­rants, su­per­mar­kets, ho­tels, casi­noes and pri­vate mem­bers clubs have sprung up through­out the coun­try.Last month, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Rolph Bal­go­b­in, in his con­tri­bu­tion to de­bate on the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence (Amend­ment) Bill 2011, called for a po­lice probe of sev­er­al ques­tion­able new busi­ness­es in T&T. Bal­go­b­in said ter­ror­ist and crim­i­nal net­works were "liv­ing high", while gen­uine busi­ness­es are fac­ing stran­gu­la­tion be­cause of the glob­al eco­nom­ic cri­sis."Clear­ly many of these (new) busi­ness­es have no clear source of fund­ing and even more im­por­tant­ly, they do not have a sus­tain­able busi­ness mod­el," Bal­go­b­in said.

He said many of the busi­ness­men "can't speak the lan­guage, they haven't even mas­tered the ba­sics of the so­ci­eties that they are op­er­at­ing in and you have a mil­lion-dol­lar busi­ness." The Tri­ad is gov­erned by a strict code of ethics which en­sures that most of their ac­tiv­i­ties re­main se­cret. Mem­bers are part of a hi­er­ar­chy and strin­gent dis­ci­pline is en­forced by the lead­ers.Com­ing out of the Tri­ad is an en­ti­ty known as the Snake­head Gang which is made up of the younger gen­er­a­tion of Tri­ad mem­bers, and who re­port­ed­ly han­dle hu­man traf­fick­ing. It is not known if there are Snake­head Gangs in T&T.

Com­po­si­tion of the Chi­nese Tri­ad

Based on in­for­ma­tion from the Unit­ed States Coun­ty Sher­iff's De­part­ment in Los An­ge­les, there are four ma­jor Chi­nese Tri­ads op­er­at­ing in the west­ern hemi­sphere.These are Sung Lian, Tian Dao Man, Four Seas and the Unit­ed Bam­boo, which have pro­lif­er­at­ed through­out the west­ern world in­to a high­ly or­gan­ised glob­al net­work.Sung Lian has sev­er­al hun­dred mem­bers, most­ly sec­ond-and third-gen­er­a­tion main­land im­mi­grants who are in­volved in a range of ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing debt col­lec­tion, broth­els and small busi­ness­es.The Tian Dao Man has sev­er­al hun­dred mem­bers who are most­ly na­tive Tai­wanese. They are in­volved in debt col­lec­tion, mas­sage par­lours, broth­els, small busi­ness­es. In­tel­li­gence sources say that the Tian Dao Man had a pres­ence in Grena­da. How­ev­er, spec­u­la­tion is rife that the Unit­ed Bam­boo car­tel as well as the Four Seas gang have set up op­er­a­tions inthis coun­try.

The Four Seas gang has more than 2,000 mem­bers in the Unit­ed States alone. Most of them are sec­ond-and third-gen­er­a­tion im­mi­grants who are pri­mar­i­ly in­volved in con­struc­tion, se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices, debt col­lec­tion, mas­sage par­lours, broth­els and small busi­ness­es.

The Unit­ed Bam­boo car­tel is by far the largest with more than 10,000 mem­bers in the US. Its base com­pris­es of sec­ond-and third-gen­er­a­tion im­mi­grants who like the Four Seas are in­volved in con­struc­tion, se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices, debt col­lec­tion, loan shark­ing, gam­bling dens, pri­vate mem­bers' clubs, restau­rants and small busi­ness­es.It is be­lieved that most of the Chi­nese un­der­world are linked to the Unit­ed Bam­boo and are guid­ed by a spe­cif­ic code of ethics which main­tains their qui­et ex­pan­sion and or­gan­i­sa­tion­al suc­cess.

Ac­cord­ing to the code trans­lat­ed from a doc­u­ment ti­tled "Por­trait of a Tri­ad", mem­bers must main­tain har­mo­ny with lo­cals as their first pri­or­i­ty.The clause in­di­cates that all mem­bers must "es­tab­lish good so­cial and per­son­al con­nec­tions so as not to cre­ate en­e­mies." The lead­ers al­so seek spe­cial favours and help from un­com­mit­ted gang mem­bers by em­pha­sis­ing re­la­tion­ships with out­side peo­ple.Gam­bling is the car­tel's main fi­nan­cial source but mem­bers are man­dat­ed to be care­ful about how gam­bling af­fairs are han­dled.The code al­so states: "Do not take it up­on your­self to start things and make de­ci­sions you are not au­tho­rised to make. You are to dis­cuss and plan all mat­ters with the group and the el­der broth­er first."All mem­bers are giv­en as­signed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and they are urged not to cre­ate con­fu­sion.

An­oth­er clause of the code reads: "We must not di­vulge our plans and af­fairs to out­siders, for ex­am­ple to our wives, girl­friends, etc."This is for our own safe­ty. We have to be unit­ed with all our broth­ers and obey our el­der broth­er's or­ders. All mon­ey earned out­side the group must be turned over to the group. You must not keep any of it for your­self. Let the el­der broth­er de­cide."When tar­get­ing wealthy prospects, mem­bers of the Tri­ad are man­dat­ed that they must not act hasti­ly.

"Fur­ther­more, do not ha­rass or threat­en them. Act to pre­vent sus­pi­cion and fear up­on their part. If any­thing un­ex­pect­ed hap­pens, do not aban­don your broth­ers. If ar­rest­ed, shoul­der all re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and blame. Do not in­volve your broth­ers," the code states.This code of ethics has en­sured that all mat­ters re­lat­ed to the Chi­nese com­mu­ni­ty are kept se­cret. Po­lice said al­though there have been in­ci­dents of as­sault and theft, these are al­most nev­er re­port­ed to lo­cal au­thor­i­ties.

'We are not all bad'

Mean­while, mem­bers of the lo­cal Chi­nese com­mu­ni­ty said the ex­pan­sion of the Tri­ad has caused dis­crim­i­na­tion against Chi­nese im­mi­grants, many of whom are mak­ing a pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tion to the de­vel­op­ment of T&T.A Chi­nese restau­ra­teur of San Fer­nan­do, who has lived in Trinidad for the past eight years, said the kid­nap­ping and pos­si­ble death of 31-year-old Xue Hua Shan, as well as the mur­der of busi­ness­man An­drew Chin, has shak­en up the com­mu­ni­ty. Shan was ab­duct­ed just be­fore 11 pm on April 13, from her Sev­enth Street, Barataria, home.Chin, 61, of Hills­bor­ough, Mar­aval, was mur­dered on April 17, just out­side his restau­rant in Eller­slie Plaza, Mar­aval.In­for­ma­tion cir­cu­lat­ing with­in the Chi­nese com­mu­ni­ty sug­gest that a Hong Kong busi­ness­man, who came to in­ves­ti­gate Shan's dis­ap­pear­ance, may have been linked to her al­leged killing.

"We hear­ing Shan was girl­friend to this Hong Kong busi­ness­man and his fam­i­ly find out and they kill she," the restau­ra­teur said with a thick ac­cent. She ex­plained that Chin was not "clean" and had been in­volved in mon­ey laun­der­ing.An­oth­er San Fer­nan­do busi­ness own­er, who came to Trinidad dur­ing the 1970s, said the pro­lif­er­a­tion of the Chi­nese Tri­ad was hurt­ing the rep­u­ta­tion of the Chi­nese."If this no stop, Chi­nee no live Trinidad," she said wig­gling her fin­ger.She said with re­cent me­dia re­ports, im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers and po­lice have been keep­ing a clos­er eye on Chi­nese busi­ness­peo­ple, a move which she strong­ly rec­om­mend­ed."It have good Chi­nee and bad Chi­nee. They have to send back bad Chi­nee," she said.

In­vest­ments by Chi­na in the Caribbean

But de­spite the pro­lif­er­a­tion of the Chi­nese Tri­ad in the re­gion, the Chi­nese Gov­ern­ment as well as Chi­nese cor­po­ra­tions have been con­tribut­ing pos­i­tive­ly to the de­vel­op­ment of Caribbean is­lands.At a time when many Caribbean Gov­ern­ments are strug­gling with the eco­nom­ic down­turn, Chi­nese cor­po­ra­tions have been cre­at­ing new mar­kets for their prod­ucts, spend­ing bil­lions in ma­jor tourism projects, fi­nanc­ing roads, ports and cre­at­ing amal­ga­ma­tions with com­pa­nies.The fol­low­ing is a list of ma­jor projects fund­ed by the Chi­nese Gov­ern­ment in the Caribbean.

Chi­nese Gov­ern­ment makes a com­mit­ment in 2011 to build a $600 mil­lion deep sea har­bour, high­way and port in Suri­name to im­prove link­ages with Brazil.

Chi­na in­vests $462 mil­lion in a stalled beach front re­sort Pun­ta Per­la on Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic's east Coast.

Hong Kong based con­glom­er­ate, Hutchi­son Wham­poa Lim­it­ed, com­mits to $1 bil­lion con­tain­er port in Ba­hamas.

Chi­nese Gov­ern­ment spends $17 mil­lion on crick­et sta­di­um and $122 mil­lion in eco­nom­ic as­sis­tance to Do­mini­ca.

Chi­nese min­ing com­pa­ny Bo­sai Min­er­als Group gains ma­jor­i­ty stake from Guyanese Gov­ern­ment, af­ter mak­ing a $100 mil­lion pur­chase in Omai Baux­ite Min­ing.

Chi­na's Shang­hai Con­struc­tion builds of­fi­cial Prime Min­is­ter's res­i­dence and Na­tion­al Acad­e­my of Per­form­ing Arts in Trinidad.