Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

A busi­ness group has de­nounced as un­fair claims by crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Dau­rius Figueira that an up­surge in ex­tor­tions in cen­tral Trinidad is linked to busi­ness­es that are us­ing drug mon­ey to fund their op­er­a­tions.

Figueira said in a so­cial me­dia post: “If you take drug man mon­ey to build your em­pire, and the drug man op­er­a­tion col­laps­es, ent peo­ple come look­ing for the mon­ey? Peo­ple come look­ing for the man mon­ey that you are ow­ing. How come that is ex­tor­tion? They are run­ning around now bawl­ing ex­tor­tion to make them­selves vic­tims, but they owe the peo­ple mon­ey and they are not pay­ing.

Figueira said it was not by co­in­ci­dence that kid­nap­pings were oc­cur­ring in cen­tral Trinidad fol­low­ing the col­lapse of an il­lic­it busi­ness op­er­a­tion.

Not­ing many busi­ness own­ers are com­plain­ing about the ex­tor­tions, but not go­ing to the po­lice to re­port it, he added: “If you know you owe the peo­ple mon­ey and you are not pay­ing the peo­ple, you are in the game, and you know the next thing is to kill you. Who are you go­ing to, to re­port it when he has all his peo­ple in the po­lice sta­tion watch­ing alyuh?

“From the time you see they grab­bing man and send­ing ran­som, but they find­ing the man dead. Ent, they get their mon­ey and they kill him?”

How­ev­er, the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC) de­nied Figue­ria’s claims in a strong­ly word­ed state­ment, say­ing they were un­fair to all busi­ness­men.

CCIC pres­i­dent Bal­dath Ma­haraj de­scribed the crim­i­nol­o­gist’s com­ments as un­for­tu­nate.

“While I un­der­stand the im­por­tance of ex­am­in­ing all fac­tors con­tribut­ing to crime, I must em­pha­size that the vast ma­jor­i­ty of busi­ness peo­ple in our com­mu­ni­ty are hon­est, hard­work­ing in­di­vid­u­als striv­ing to grow their busi­ness­es, sup­port their fam­i­lies, and con­tribute to our econ­o­my by cre­at­ing much-need­ed jobs,” he said.

“It is both in­ac­cu­rate and un­fair to paint all busi­ness­men as com­plic­it in their vic­tim­iza­tion. Many lo­cal en­tre­pre­neurs are op­er­at­ing with­in a chal­leng­ing eco­nom­ic land­scape, fac­ing re­al is­sues such as lim­it­ed ac­cess to af­ford­able fi­nanc­ing, high op­er­a­tional costs, and a per­va­sive threat of crime.

“For many, these chal­lenges are com­pound­ed by ex­tor­tion and threats that are en­tire­ly un­de­served and are un­for­tu­nate­ly in­dica­tive of a broad­er crime is­sue in the coun­try.”

Ma­haraj said the CCIC con­tin­ues to ad­vo­cate for in­creased sup­port from the Gov­ern­ment and law en­force­ment agen­cies to tack­le the root caus­es of crime.

“While we ac­knowl­edge that no in­sti­tu­tion alone can re­solve these com­plex is­sues, a col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach is es­sen­tial. We are com­mit­ted to work­ing with the po­lice and the gov­ern­ment to en­hance se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures and en­sure that all busi­ness own­ers, who are cru­cial to the re­gion’s eco­nom­ic vi­tal­i­ty, can op­er­ate in a safe and sup­port­ive en­vi­ron­ment.”

Ma­haraj said the CCIC will con­tin­ue to stand by our mem­bers and rep­re­sent their con­cerns fair­ly, while al­so work­ing with all stake­hold­ers to pro­mote a com­mu­ni­ty where law­ful busi­ness­es can thrive with­out fear.

Head of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s Ex­tor­tion Unit Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Richard Smit said he had no in­for­ma­tion to sug­gest that some busi­ness­men who are be­ing ex­tort­ed are linked to the drug trade.

Smith said, he doesn’t know every­one’s busi­ness and he can’t say if the in­for­ma­tion the crim­i­nol­o­gist has is cor­rect or in­cor­rect, as he would have his sources.

Heer­ah: Avoid en­gag­ing with crim­i­nals

Re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Garvin Heer­ah warned the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to avoid en­gag­ing di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly with un­der­world fig­ures or crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

“En­gag­ing with such in­di­vid­u­als or align­ing with il­le­gal busi­ness prac­tices—even un­in­ten­tion­al­ly—ex­pos­es en­ter­pris­es to se­ri­ous risks, in­clud­ing po­ten­tial ex­tor­tion, threats, and the in­fil­tra­tion of or­ga­nized crime in­to le­git­i­mate op­er­a­tions. These con­nec­tions can un­der­mine both cor­po­rate rep­u­ta­tion and per­son­al safe­ty while invit­ing un­want­ed scruti­ny from law en­force­ment agen­cies.

“Busi­ness lead­ers are urged to ex­er­cise vig­i­lance, en­sure that all part­ner­ships are thor­ough­ly vet­ted, and adopt ro­bust risk as­sess­ment and com­pli­ance prac­tices. Align­ing with the prin­ci­ples of in­tegri­ty and trans­paren­cy not on­ly safe­guards in­di­vid­ual com­pa­nies but con­tributes to a safer, more re­silient busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment across Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

Heer­ah said he be­lieved the “alarm­ing rise” in ex­tor­tions across the coun­try re­flects an in­creas­ing­ly or­gan­ised, in­sid­i­ous net­work of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, al­leged­ly dri­ven by or­gan­ised crime groups.

He said the threat calls for a co­or­di­nat­ed, high-im­pact re­sponse to dis­man­tle the net­works.

Heer­ah said the An­ti-Ex­tor­tion Unit should im­ple­ment the fol­low­ing strate­gies:

1. Deep In­tel­li­gence Gath­er­ing: Lever­ag­ing in­tel­li­gence as­sets to in­fil­trate and gath­er in­for­ma­tion on crim­i­nal groups be­hind these ex­tor­tion schemes, in­clud­ing track­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion pat­terns with­in prison walls, to dis­man­tle net­works at their source.

2. Sur­gi­cal Sting Op­er­a­tions: Con­duct tar­get­ed, strate­gic sting op­er­a­tions against sus­pect­ed ex­tor­tion­ists and their as­so­ciates to di­rect­ly dis­rupt their in­flu­ence, pre­vent re­tal­i­a­tion, and avoid col­lat­er­al dam­age to in­no­cent par­ties.

3. Vic­tim and Whistle­blow­er Pro­tec­tion: Es­tab­lish­ing an in­su­lat­ed frame­work for vic­tim and whistle­blow­er pro­tec­tion is crit­i­cal to en­sure safe­ty and en­cour­age co­op­er­a­tion. This plan can in­clude anony­mous re­port­ing hot­lines, pro­tec­tive re­lo­ca­tion op­tions, and le­gal sup­port for those im­pact­ed by ex­tor­tion.

4. Com­mu­ni­ty and Busi­ness Out­reach: Col­lab­o­rat­ing with lo­cal busi­ness­es and com­mu­ni­ties to build aware­ness of ex­tor­tion tac­tics and pro­vide sup­port, in­clud­ing sem­i­nars on iden­ti­fy­ing and re­port­ing sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ties.

5. Le­gal and Pol­i­cy Sup­port: Strength­en­ing our le­gal sys­tem to se­cure swift pros­e­cu­tion for ex­tor­tion-re­lat­ed crimes, with mea­sures that al­low courts to swift­ly act on cas­es in­volv­ing or­gan­ised crime af­fil­i­a­tions and sup­port vic­tims’ rights,” he said.

—Ad­di­tion­al re­port­ing by Shas­tri Boodan