JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Friday, April 4, 2025

Busi­ness con­fed­er­a­tion:

Extortion threatens business survival

by

Raphael John-Lall
222 days ago
20240825
Undertakers remove the body of a murder victim in Fyzabad, as relatives and residents look on.

Undertakers remove the body of a murder victim in Fyzabad, as relatives and residents look on.

RISHI RAGOONATH

The Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers (CR­BC), which rep­re­sents the re­tail sec­tor in T&T in a state­ment to the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, said it views the cur­rent crime sit­u­a­tion in T&T with great con­cern.

“It is the view of the CR­BC that crime is not on­ly af­fects eco­nom­ic pro­duc­tiv­i­ty when vic­tims miss work, but com­mu­ni­ties al­so are af­fect­ed through loss of tourism in­vest­ments and re­tail sales. Even the so-called vic­tim­less crimes of hu­man traf­fick­ing, drug abuse, and gam­bling have ma­jor so­cial con­se­quences.”

The state­ment al­so said in ad­di­tion to this, run­away crime has a neg­a­tive im­pact on busi­ness in­vest­ment and gov­ern­ment spend­ing re­gard­ing in­fra­struc­tur­al works.

“This is due to the emerg­ing crime of ex­tor­tion, which is rear­ing its ug­ly head and is very alarm­ing. The po­lice ser­vice needs to be more flex­i­ble and ad­just their struc­ture to set up a unit to deal with the ex­tor­tion rack­et and pro­tect small busi­ness­es and le­git­i­mate con­trac­tors.”

The state­ment added: “Chron­ic is­sues with crime can lead to the clo­sure of busi­ness­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly small busi­ness­es that lack the re­sources to re­cov­er. This is a re­al sit­u­a­tion, as many fam­i­lies who are in­volved in busi­ness are clos­ing their en­ter­pris­es and mi­grat­ing to the Unit­ed States and Cana­da. There is a huge loss in con­fi­dence and a high lev­el of dis­pro­por­tion­ate fear among these fam­i­lies.”

In the state­ment, the CR­BC called for more Po­lice/Army joint pa­trols with­in all dis­tricts with­in T&T and stat­ed that cit­i­zens now con­sid­er all of T&T to be “hot spots.”

“It is on­ly in re­cent press re­ports that high­light­ed the town of Ari­ma be­ing plagued by gang vi­o­lence and busi­ness­es are shut­ting down and even res­i­dents are mov­ing out of the area. This is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for Min­is­ter Kei­th Scot­land to be strate­gic and ap­ply both the hard and soft pow­er to bring sus­tained sta­bil­i­ty with­in the hot spots with­in Ari­ma.”

The state­ment end­ed by say­ing that there is a “fan­tas­tic op­por­tu­ni­ty” for Scot­land to hold mean­ing­ful and con­struc­tive di­a­logue with the many dif­fer­ent busi­ness cham­bers and as­so­ci­a­tions to un­der­stand their chal­lenges and ex­change views on some prac­ti­cal so­lu­tions.

Busi­ness ‘fronts’ tar­get­ed

Busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty in T&T con­tin­ues to be neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed, as the mil­lion-dol­lar il­le­gal firearm trade and mur­der rate are in­creas­ing un­abat­ed­ly.

A re­search pa­per com­plet­ed in May of this year by au­thor and crim­i­nol­o­gist Dau­rius Figueira analysed crime sta­tis­tics which show the im­pact of ris­ing transna­tion­al crime on the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

It al­so high­lights the wor­ry­ing trend of the emer­gence of new il­lic­it in­dus­tries in T&T.

The re­search pa­per is en­ti­tled “An analy­sis of kill events with two or more vic­tims in T&T 2017- 2023.”

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, Figueira gave more de­tails.

“The war be­tween two con­tend­ing busi­ness mod­els in the il­lic­it trades have changed the na­ture of the il­lic­it trades in T&T, changed crim­i­nal­i­ty, fur­ther im­pact­ed the costs of do­ing busi­ness send­ing it high­er in a pe­ri­od when the lev­el of de­mand has tak­en a hit. There is now a re­sort to at­tacks against the per­son and prop­er­ty where busi­ness­es and their own­ers/op­er­a­tors are tar­get­ed. The wars in the il­lic­it trades and the new or­der of the il­lic­it trades have now lim­it­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties for those seek­ing em­ploy­ment,” he said.

He al­so re­ferred to fig­ures in the un­der­world who are hurt­ing the im­age of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty by us­ing le­git­i­mate busi­ness­es as a front for their il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties.

“De­mand ex­ceeds the sup­ply of op­por­tu­ni­ty. The dis­placed are now em­brac­ing at­tacks on the per­son and prop­er­ty. Per­sons in­volved in the il­lic­it trades who run front busi­ness are tar­gets in the war be­tween il­lic­it busi­ness mod­els, which is act­ing as blood on the wa­ter for crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.”

“The mur­der toll for 2024 to-date sig­nals the like­li­hood that we will, in 2024, sur­pass the mur­der toll of 2023. If this means a re­turn to the days of 600 plus mur­ders per year, time will tell. We don’t have a gang prob­lem in T&T, we have transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime cre­at­ing and dri­ving gang­land and its evo­lu­tion. We must now po­lice those pulling the strings not on­ly the mar­i­onettes!”

New il­lic­it in­dus­tries

While the Gov­ern­ment and the busi­ness sec­tor have re­peat­ed­ly called for new eco­nom­ic sec­tors and in­dus­tries to be de­vel­oped to solve the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic chal­lenges, Figueira’s re­search pa­per shows that new “in­dus­tries” are de­vel­op­ing but these are il­lic­it in­dus­tries that are not re­lat­ed to le­git­i­mate eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

In the re­search pa­per, Figueira ex­plained that the use of il­lic­it guns as the dom­i­nant in­stru­ment of mur­der in T&T for the 2017 to 2023 pe­ri­od de­mands an un­der­stand­ing of the il­lic­it small weapons trade in T&T.

He said ac­quir­ing a steady af­ford­able sup­ply of weapons from the AR-15 and AK-47 plat­forms by the Colom­bian af­fil­i­ates and the un­af­fil­i­at­ed in T&T be­came an im­per­a­tive vi­tal­ly nec­es­sary to de­fend their hege­mo­ny and sur­vive.

“An arms race in the il­lic­it trades of T&T then ap­peared in the T&T il­lic­it trades in the sec­ond decade of the 21st cen­tu­ry which in­ten­si­fied the na­ture of the en­gage­ment dri­ving it at times to para­noia with a pen­chant for ter­ror­ism. A con­comi­tant de­vel­op­ment aris­ing from the re­ac­ti­va­tion of the US sup­ply pipelines was the smug­gling of re­load­ing ma­chines, black pow­der, det­o­na­tors and bul­lets for re­load­ing spent car­tridges to live rounds of am­mu­ni­tion.”

He al­so said this new il­lic­it in­dus­try then cre­at­ed a de­mand for spent shells overnight where all gun ranges be­came tar­gets of sup­ply for this valu­able com­mod­i­ty.

“The land­scape of the il­lic­it trades has been or­gan­i­cal­ly changed, di­ver­si­fied with the pres­ence of two transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime groups in the il­lic­it trades of T&T un­leash­ing im­pacts up­on the so­cial or­der of T&T nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced be­fore in the his­to­ry of the il­lic­it trades of T&T. As this new mod­el de­vel­ops, evolves fur­ther im­pacts are forth­com­ing on the so­cial or­der of T&T.”


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored