Po­lice are now pro­vid­ing se­cu­ri­ty for a lo­cal con­trac­tor who claims he is be­ing ex­tort­ed by an al­leged gang leader based in east Trinidad.

The gang leader is al­leged­ly seek­ing some $30,000 a month from the con­trac­tor to en­sure the pro­tec­tion of the site and safe­ty of the work­ers. Al­ter­na­tive­ly, the gang leader is ask­ing the con­trac­tor to hire his gang mem­bers.

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, the con­trac­tor de­cid­ed to speak out, al­so re­veal­ing au­dio and video record­ings that cap­ture the al­leged gang leader at­tempt­ing to ex­tort him and mak­ing threats.

The on­go­ing project is lo­cat­ed along the east-west cor­ri­dor, and both the con­trac­tor and con­struc­tion site are cur­rent­ly un­der po­lice pro­tec­tion.

The gang leader, who op­er­ates in the Mt D’or area, re­port­ed­ly start­ed tar­get­ing the con­trac­tor a month ago, but it in­ten­si­fied over the last two weeks, when the na­ture of the calls and de­mands took a dif­fer­ent and more con­cern­ing di­rec­tion.

Fol­low­ing are ex­cerpts from calls made by the gang leader to the con­trac­tor:

Con­trac­tor: Hel­lo

Al­leged Gang Leader: I don’t push no vibes to­wards you, I don’t come around al­lyuh or come and take over and all kind of mad thing but it is bet­ter I come and close down every­thing and noth­ing can­not go on be­cause al­lyuh don’t want the prin­ci­ple of how things does run. I just show­ing you dawg. What I giv­ing you is a whole over­look of se­cu­ri­ty to make sure be­cause all them years gone and I nev­er try to let no­body dis­re­spect al­lyuh. It is a year you all work­ing there and no­body nev­er come there and vi­o­late there un­der no lev­el be­cause of me, un­der­stand, that is the or­der I set.

Con­trac­tor: I will have to com­mu­ni­cate your de­mands to the boss be­cause I am meet­ing with him to­mor­row.

Al­leged Gang Leader: If you don’t want to com­ply, you done know. That com­pa­ny nev­er give us noth­ing ever, so I re­al­ly don’t give a f--- and what­ev­er go on, go on be­cause (con­trac­tor name men­tioned) nev­er do noth­ing for me and we sur­viv­ing get­ting oth­er wuk and get­ting oth­er things from oth­er places all the time for all these years, them nev­er do noth­ing for f------ me, yuh dig. So, if a fel­la doesn’t want to com­ply or come to some agree­ment, he could f------- pack up and go he way, yuh dig, be­cause that project will stay there till it falls down, we don’t care.

Con­trac­tor: Well, I will con­vey that to him.

Al­leged gang leader: Get back on to me as soon as pos­si­ble, I don’t re­al­ly ting, even if the man have to talk to me, I am a rea­son­able man, I am not no f------ beast, yuh un­der­stand, I want him to come and say that he can hire so and pay so so, I could work to suite, yuh un­der­stand, so he could call me off you phone and we could re­late, yuh dig and make sure that this could be pos­si­ble.

Con­trac­tor: I will con­vey this to him and see if he can make a call.

This record­ing was done via phone call to one of the con­trac­tors, where the gang leader al­leged­ly de­mand­ed that he hire mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty and pay for se­cu­ri­ty.

The next record­ing ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia was an en­counter at the site of­fice, when the al­leged gang leader and a few oth­er men vis­it­ed. The clip was 18 min­utes long and we ex­tract­ed some ex­cerpts.

Al­leged Gang Leader: You record­ing there ah wah.

Con­trac­tor: Yeah, I am record­ing, I record con­ver­sa­tions so I can be ac­cu­rate to my peo­ple down the road and the peo­ple that em­ploy me

Al­leged Gang Leader: I un­der­stand, you done know how the thing does go, we look­ing for work for men be­cause look how long the work go­ing on. I want you to lis­ten to me to, you re­alise no­body nev­er come here and in­ter­fere with noth­ing for a year be­cause we set a trend and make sure and set a rule that no­body in­ter­fere with noth­ing here.

Con­trac­tor: You are not the first per­son who came here you know.

Al­leged Gang Leader: If a man is to come here and do any­thing, that have to come to me first and that is just to start, right, let me show you this now. I don’t care, we have we own thing, we does get con­tracts, we does get all kind of things, we don’t have to fight up, we does live with good and this com­mu­ni­ty is all about re­spect, yuh un­der­stand and we doh just go around any­body. I just want a fel­la com­ply be­cause this is my com­mu­ni­ty and we nev­er come here in the past and now and vi­o­late.

In an­oth­er ex­change be­tween the con­trac­tor and the al­leged gang leader, the lat­ter was con­cerned he was be­ing played by the con­trac­tors. Here is the con­ver­sa­tion:

Al­leged gang leader: What I say­ing, hear what go­ing on, I want to get on to that man (project own­er) now boy, or else it have no work till Wednes­day. I feel like I could just take off f------ cur­rent and run se­cu­ri­ty every f------ thing, I telling you, be­cause I find it is a big kicksy ting with me, yuh un­der­stand, I want to talk to the man to­day boy, let that man get on to me boy or else it have no work un­til boy, f--- that be­cause that work don’t give we noth­ing and it nev­er give we noth­ing but dis­tress, we and we chil­dren. I don’t deal like this, I does deal with love. You want me to show you the kind of pow­ers that I have or what?

Con­trac­tor: I don’t want to know that, I don’t want to see your pow­er and don’t want to be part of it.

Al­leged gang leader: Is love, I want to deal with all yuh with boy and want to show all yuh to know that, we on pos­i­tive think­ing here, yuh un­der­stand. I want to talk to that man to­day boy. It is near­ly a year and I give all yuh the bligh boy and if I don’t get through, if a man touch­es a block on that site, I will break he hand, yuh un­der­stand. All yuh don’t know it have men want to come there and op­press alyuh, it have men ain work­ing nowhere and their du­ty is to just rob and thief and do all kind of bad things. You know why is I pre­vent­ing them from com­ing there, is I put up that force field from them from com­ing there but like all yuh don’t want to work with me boy.

Fol­low­ing the meet­ing and calls, the TTPS last week de­ployed of­fi­cers to the project site to pro­vide se­cu­ri­ty so the project could be com­plet­ed. The con­trac­tor was al­so placed un­der guard and has per­son­al pro­tec­tion wher­ev­er he goes.

The record­ings are now in the hands of the po­lice and se­nior of­fi­cers told Guardian Me­dia the mat­ter is be­ing close­ly mon­i­tored.

In­ci­dents in­creas­ing

Last month, Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal urged the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to take a de­ci­sive stance against ex­tor­tion.

He high­light­ed the in­volve­ment of gang lead­ers and in­car­cer­at­ed in­di­vid­u­als who have been mak­ing death threats and ex­tort­ing “mil­lions” of dol­lars from busi­ness­es. He called for a re­view or po­ten­tial amend­ment of the Kid­nap­ping Act, which ad­dress­es the is­sue of “us­ing men­aces to steal.”

An­oth­er in­ci­dent of al­leged ex­tor­tion led to the mur­der of Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion con­trac­tor Kevin Bark­er in Mal­oney last month. Gang­sters re­port­ed­ly de­mand­ed 20 per cent of the es­ti­mat­ed $90,000 con­tract he re­ceived for the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of build­ings there. He re­port­ed­ly re­fused to pay the tax.

Al­so last month, Ju­nior Prince, 52, and Ke­ston Look­nanan, 36, both from Kel­ly Vil­lage, Ca­roni, were charged with al­leged ex­tor­tion in­volv­ing a busi­ness own­er. The charges against them in­volve the ac­cu­sa­tion of de­mand­ing mon­ey through threats. They were both grant­ed bail.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, in Ju­ly 2023, a busi­ness own­er was al­leged­ly co­erced in­to mak­ing a $100,000 pay­ment un­der threats of vi­o­lence and the de­struc­tion of the es­tab­lish­ment by fire.

The busi­ness own­er re­port­ed­ly com­plied and paid a sum of mon­ey. How­ev­er, fur­ther de­mands for a re­cur­ring month­ly “pro­tec­tion tax” were sub­se­quent­ly made.