The Ba­hamas’ Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter, Wayne Munroe, has dis­missed sug­ges­tions that he is the “high-rank­ing politi­cian” be­ing re­ferred to by Unit­ed States law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties to fa­cil­i­tate a co­caine traf­fick­ing scheme.

Munroe told The Tri­bune news­pa­per that he has not re­ceived any mon­ey, nor had he been asked to ac­com­mo­date any wrong­do­ing.

“I have not of­fered to ac­com­mo­date any wrong­do­ing, and I state that cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly,”  he told the news­pa­per.

Prime Min­is­ter Phillip Davis told Par­lia­ment on Wednes­day that the rev­e­la­tions by the Unit­ed States au­thor­i­ties link­ing mem­bers of the Roy­al Ba­hamas Po­lice Force (RBPF) and the Roy­al Ba­hamas De­fence Force (RBDF) strike at the “core of who we are as a na­tion”.

“Madam Speak­er, this House and the Ba­hami­an peo­ple de­serve an­swers,” he said.

PM Davis stat­ed that the Gov­ern­ment of The Ba­hamas will act de­ci­sive­ly to en­sure that those re­spon­si­ble for these breach­es, re­gard­less of rank or po­si­tion, are held ac­count­able.

“This be­tray­al will not go unan­swered,” he vowed.

On Wednes­day, the Unit­ed States At­tor­ney for the South­ern Dis­trict of New York, Dami­an Williams, said that as al­leged, for years, drug traf­fick­ers have smug­gled tons of co­caine through The Ba­hamas with the sup­port and pro­tec­tion of cor­rupt Ba­hami­an gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, whom he said con­trol air­ports through­out the coun­try and pro­vide sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion about US Coast Guard move­ments to drug traf­fick­ers.

“This In­dict­ment is the lat­est in a se­ries of charges that this Of­fice and the DEA’s Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Di­vi­sion have brought against cor­rupt gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials around the globe, who part­ner with dan­ger­ous co­caine traf­fick­ers,” he added.

Along with Anne Mil­gram, the ad­min­is­tra­tor of the US Drug En­force­ment Ad­min­is­tra­tion (DEA), Williams an­nounced on Wednes­day af­ter­noon the un­seal­ing of the in­dict­ment charg­ing 13 de­fen­dants with co­caine im­por­ta­tion and re­lat­ed weapons of­fens­es, in con­nec­tion with their par­tic­i­pa­tion in a mas­sive co­caine im­por­ta­tion con­spir­a­cy en­abled by “cor­rupt Ba­hami­an gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials”.

The in­dict­ment states that in or about Sep­tem­ber 2024, one of the men ar­rest­ed ex­plained that in ex­change for a two-mil­lion-dol­lar bribe, a high-rank­ing Ba­hami­an politi­cian—whom the man named—would au­tho­rize the as­sis­tance and in­volve­ment of armed RBPF of­fi­cials to fa­cil­i­tate in­com­ing co­caine ship­ments.

But Munroe, who is cur­rent­ly at­tend­ing a Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) min­is­ters of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty meet­ing in St Kitts, told the news­pa­per whether the politi­cian’s iden­ti­ty is dis­closed will de­pend on whether the US com­mu­ni­cates the mat­ter con­fi­den­tial­ly or not.

“The prime min­is­ter is deal­ing di­rect­ly with that as­pect of it and I would pre­fer to de­fer to him for that. But I know that in some of these law en­force­ment mat­ters, in­for­ma­tion is giv­en to you on the ba­sis that you do not dis­close it,” Mon­roe said.

Munroe al­so com­ment­ed on state­ments post­ed on so­cial me­dia, ques­tion­ing the fu­ture of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Clay­ton Fer­nan­der, as a re­sult of the ar­rests of mem­bers of the RBPF.

“I think the sim­ple an­swer to it is, as put by the prime min­is­ter, we’re go­ing to be hold­ing every­one ac­count­able. This is a very se­ri­ous mat­ter. It is said, if you read the in­dict­ment, that it be­gan in May of 2021 and that pre­ced­ed the time that this present ad­min­is­tra­tion came in be­fore Mr Fer­nan­der took the chair,” he not­ed.

“All I would say is, you judge the head of an or­gan­i­sa­tion by how they re­act to things like this, and so you may have bad ap­ples in every or­gan­i­sa­tion, and you judge the lead­er­ship by how they re­act to it,” Munroe said.  “And so, he will be judged by how he re­acts to it, just as no doubt the pub­lic will judge us by how we re­act to it.”

Munroe said that while RBPF has shown a will­ing­ness to hold of­fi­cers ac­count­able, “what  would be rep­re­hen­si­ble is if po­lice of­fi­cers were do­ing things that were wrong and the po­lice force was cov­er­ing up for them.”

“What is be­ing demon­strat­ed is the po­lice force isn’t cov­er­ing up for per­sons,” he told the Tri­bune news­pa­per. —NAS­SAU, Ba­hamas (CMC)