Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Ex­tor­tion threats by crim­i­nals have forced a busi­ness fam­i­ly to flee the coun­try.

One of the own­ers of Pablo’s Dou­bles said af­ter the fam­i­ly was asked to pay $75,000 and their home at Streatham Lodge Ex­ten­sion, St Au­gus­tine, was shot at on Au­gust 4, the fam­i­ly fled the coun­try.

Pablo’s Dou­bles has three lo­ca­tions be­tween Tu­na­puna and St Au­gus­tine. The own­er of one out­let, who asked not to be iden­ti­fied, said oth­er busi­ness­es were al­so shot at and de­mands for pay­ments made. He said those busi­ness­es paid the de­mands be­cause they could not af­ford to leave T&T.

“We just put our whole lives in a suit­case and left. I am nev­er com­ing back, maybe for va­ca­tion,” the own­er said

He said the fam­i­ly has no idea what their next move will be as they set­tle in North Amer­i­ca.

Asked what the au­thor­i­ties can do to en­cour­age them to re­turn home, he said, “What can the au­thor­i­ties do? These guys are go­ing to do what, go in front of the judge and get bail even­tu­al­ly and this will con­tin­ue to go on. It not stop­ping.”

There are re­ports of in­creased ex­tor­tion of busi­ness­es in St Au­gus­tine and MP Khadi­jah Ameen yes­ter­day ap­pealed for the in­ter­ven­tion of the Gov­ern­ment and the po­lice.

She said small busi­ness­es were be­ing tar­get­ed and while the own­ers could flee, their em­ploy­ees were be­ing left be­hind job­less.

“The con­cern I have is that res­i­dents and busi­ness own­ers are very re­luc­tant to come for­ward with in­for­ma­tion be­cause they are afraid of the re­tal­i­a­tion,” she said.

Ameen said while the Cy­ber Crime Unit and oth­er arms of the po­lice ser­vice were work­ing with those who came for­ward, the greater is­sue was the re­cov­ery of the com­mu­ni­ty af­ter busi­ness own­ers flee, leav­ing un­em­ployed peo­ple be­hind.

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin said ex­tor­tion re­mains a top mat­ter for po­lice and the es­tab­lish­ment of a ded­i­cat­ed unit to tack­le that crime is be­ing con­sid­ered.

“We are putting strate­gies in place to deal with that, so as re­ports come in, we are look­ing at these re­quests based on their mer­it,” he said

Ben­jamin said in some cas­es, spe­cial in­ves­ti­ga­tors were be­ing as­signed but di­vi­sion­al com­man­ders had ju­ris­dic­tion over their re­spec­tive ar­eas to ad­dress re­ports of ex­tor­tion as they saw fit with­in the law.

On Sun­day, po­lice killed two teens, Amir Boodan, 16 and Joseph Ramjit, 18, and Jaya Barath, the moth­er of a two-year-old girl, in a shootout near the Ca­roni Cre­ma­tion site. Po­lice said the trio were af­fil­i­at­ed with the Re­sis­tance Gang, which has been ex­tort­ing busi­ness­es in the Cen­tral and North­ern Di­vi­sions, en­com­pass­ing Ch­agua­nas, St Au­gus­tine and Tu­na­puna.

Con­fed­er­a­tion of Busi­ness Cham­bers co-or­di­na­tor Jai Lelad­hars­ingh ex­pressed con­cern about the up­surge in ex­tor­tions.

“There is not one word com­ing from the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty nor the of­fice of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice re­gard­ing this whole mat­ter of ex­tor­tion,” he said, adding sev­er­al busi­ness own­ers in south and cen­tral Trinidad had sold their as­sets and fled the coun­try.