Joshua Seemu­n­gal

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

The il­le­gal cop­per and met­al ex­port trade in Trinidad and To­ba­go is a US mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar busi­ness that is part of an in­ter­na­tion­al crime op­er­a­tion with links to Venezuela and Chi­na. Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Dau­rius Figueira, who has a vast net­work of lo­cal and Latin Amer­i­can crime sources, as well as sources close to the trade re­vealed that the lo­cal trade is dri­ven by crime boss­es in Trinidad.

One of the promi­nent boss­es of the trade is a no­to­ri­ous crim­i­nal fig­ure that was re­cent­ly re­leased from jail on a mur­der charge and has the fi­nal say in most of the il­lic­it trans­ac­tions, one un­der­world source re­vealed.

This thriv­ing crim­i­nal en­ter­prise has cost state util­i­ty com­pa­nies dear­ly in the last two years with loss­es es­ti­mat­ed at $25 mil­lion.

Those in­volved in the il­le­gal trade in­clude lo­cal and Venezue­lan gangs, the Chi­nese mafia, and well-re­sourced busi­ness­es that are ex­port­ing the il­le­gal prod­uct main­ly to Chi­na.

“The re­al­i­ty on the ground is when they come to cut cop­per and go with it, they come armed, you know. And when they cut­ting your TSTT ca­ble and you come out­side, they tell you–we will put shots on you, you know,” Figueira said.

“They don’t care about a ban be­cause the fact that you have to ban shows Cus­toms has col­lapsed. Cus­toms and Ex­cise were near dead when the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship came in and when they were done with it and then the next side (PNM) moved in, Cus­toms and Ex­cise are now dead and rot­ten. They don’t hire any­body to fill the posts. They don’t even hire peo­ple to do the work in Cus­toms. Right now, any­thing is pass­ing through.”

Last Mon­day, the Gov­ern­ment banned the ex­port of scrap iron and old met­al un­til Feb­ru­ary 23, 2023, at a press con­fer­ence called by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. At that press con­fer­ence, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds said that “crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty has now seeped in­to this in­dus­try in a very se­ri­ous way and it can’t es­cape the at­ten­tion of the Gov­ern­ment”.

Pro­vid­ing sta­tis­tics, he said that 218 peo­ple were ar­rest­ed for the theft of cop­per and met­als since 2020.

In 2020, he said, there were 58 re­ports of theft with 30 peo­ple ar­rest­ed, while in 2021, there were 87 re­ports of theft, with 52 ar­rests.

How­ev­er, Hinds said the num­ber of re­ports and ar­rests in­creased sig­nif­i­cant­ly be­tween Jan­u­ary and Au­gust 2022, with 162 re­ports of theft and 136 ar­rests.

Ac­cord­ing to Hinds, there were ris­ing prices of cop­per around the world, lead­ing to an in­crease in de­mand.

Quot­ing fig­ures from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice, he said lo­cal scrap iron ex­ports were val­ued at US$69 mil­lion in 2009, but in­creased to US$260 mil­lion in 2021.

In the last two years, but es­pe­cial­ly with­in the last nine months, the in­fra­struc­ture of the State’s util­i­ty com­pa­nies has been van­dalised by cop­per and met­al thieves.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les had told the me­dia that the il­le­gal trade cost the State’s util­i­ty com­pa­nies ap­prox­i­mate­ly $25 mil­lion in the last two years. In ear­ly Au­gust, Gon­za­les said that the trade cost TSTT alone $15 mil­lion in the past year. This has been putting an ad­di­tion­al squeeze on the econ­o­my.

Putting those fig­ures in­to con­text, it even costs more than the Gov­ern­ment’s So­cial and Hu­man­i­tar­i­an Sup­port Pro­gramme, which gave out a lit­tle more than 25,000 food sup­port grants, cost the State $17.1 mil­lion in 2020; while 42,450 Pub­lic As­sis­tance and Dis­abil­i­ty As­sis­tance grants cost the state $22.5 mil­lion dur­ing the same year.

Ac­cord­ing to Figueira, while it is well-es­tab­lished that lo­cal crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions are steal­ing met­als, the lo­cal trade al­so in­volves cop­per and met­als com­ing in il­le­gal­ly from Venezuela.

The is­sue of ca­ble and cop­per theft has long been present in Venezuela, he said, es­ti­mat­ing that it start­ed there on a large scale in 2017.

“That is what set off the fren­zy in Trinidad and To­ba­go. When men are steal­ing met­al from Venezuela, they dig holes in the ground and bury it. When the Venezue­lan army dis­cov­ers some of the drops, it’s al­ways in the East­ern part of Venezuela, so where do you think it’s go­ing?” the crim­i­nol­o­gist asked.

“When the army finds the drops in the east­ern states of Venezuela and digs them up, they dis­cov­er hectares of met­al, you know. They will find ways to send it out…Re­mem­ber it is il­le­gal in Venezuela, so they have to find a place to ship it out…It’s a war in Venezuela be­tween the army and il­le­gal deal­ers. It’s con­sid­ered a high crime.”

Figueira said the trade spread from Venezuela in­to Trinidad in the last two years.

He said his con­tacts on the ground in­formed him that the ma­te­r­i­al is com­ing in­to T&T to get ex­port­ed il­le­gal­ly to Chi­na.

His claims were sup­port­ed by sources close to the trade.

The sources, who spoke anony­mous­ly out of con­cern for their safe­ty, told the Sun­day Guardian that the lo­cal trade is be­ing dri­ven by an “un­der­world fig­ure with links to peo­ple in South Amer­i­ca”.

File: Members of the Port-of-Spain City Corporation Task Force load cable recovered from a scrap yard on George Street, Port-of-Spain, during a raid in June 2021.

NICOLE DRAYTON

Care­nage, Ch­aguara­mas, Ce­dros are pick­up points

They said that the US mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar trade in­volves large amounts of cop­per and oth­er met­als be­ing brought across from Venezuela to Trinidad and To­ba­go. The met­als, ac­cord­ing to the sources, are picked up in Care­nage, Ch­aguara­mas, and Ce­dros.

They are then stored and processed in se­cret lo­ca­tions in many ar­eas, in­clud­ing Point Fortin, Debe, and Diego Mar­tin, be­fore be­ing shipped in con­tain­ers, hid­den among le­gal ex­port items, to Chi­na.  

A se­nior po­lice source, speak­ing off the record, said there were claims that il­le­gal met­als were com­ing in from Venezuela and be­ing shipped to Chi­na, but said they could not con­firm this.

Ac­cord­ing to Figueira, the ca­ble and met­al theft phe­nom­e­non ex­ists all over the world, es­pe­cial­ly in the third world.

He said the il­le­gal prod­uct in oth­er coun­tries, like in Trinidad, is go­ing to Chi­na where there is an in­sa­tiable de­mand for cop­per and met­als.

Cop­per is vi­tal for many sec­tors and is com­mon­ly used for mak­ing elec­tri­cal wiring, con­struc­tion, ve­hi­cles, fu­el gas, and ma­chin­ery.

Chi­na is the world’s largest con­sumer of re­fined cop­per.

In 2021, it was es­ti­mat­ed that Chi­na ac­count­ed for 52 per cent of the world’s cop­per con­sump­tion, while in 2020, Chi­na’s steel scrap us­age was around 260 mil­lion tonnes.

“They are steal­ing cop­per and alu­mini­um and send­ing it to Chi­na be­cause that’s the work­shop of the world. The Chi­nese gov­ern­ment has re­spond­ed to it. It has put in place var­i­ous mea­sures to drop the price of cop­per in Chi­na be­cause you had a mafia in Chi­na who was spec­u­lat­ing and rais­ing the price of cop­per, and the blow­back from that was this trade of cop­per from all over the world and send­ing it to Chi­na,” he said.

“So the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment worked on that from their end by col­laps­ing the mafia and low­er­ing the price of cop­per.”

The re­sult of the price col­lapse caused a scram­ble for the met­als in Trinidad and To­ba­go be­cause the price the il­le­gal deal­ers will get for the met­als will de­crease with time.

“So what is hap­pen­ing to them now is they are look­ing to pick up as much ton­nage as pos­si­ble be­fore the blow­back from the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment hits them and the price will fall. They are try­ing to max­imise the high price be­fore the price col­laps­es here,” he said. One un­der­world source told the Sun­day Guardian that 50-70 ft of cop­per wire could fetch close to $40,000 TT. “It’s such a big busi­ness and that’s why so many peo­ple get­ting their hands in it,” the source said.

Cut cable hangs from the air in Edinburgh 500 Chaguanas.

EDISON BOODOOSINGH

 Large-scale op­er­a­tions in South Africa, Chile, South Amer­i­ca

There have been me­dia re­ports of large-scale met­al theft op­er­a­tions in South Africa, Chile, Venezuela, and oth­er South Amer­i­can and African coun­tries.

In South Africa, there has been wide­spread cop­per theft for years, with thieves tar­get­ing min­ing, trans­porta­tion, and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion in­dus­tries.

“Cop­per prices have soared over the past decade, with the com­mod­i­ty al­most tripling in val­ue since 2015. High prices, com­bined with the sheer ubiq­ui­ty of the met­al, used for wiring in vir­tu­al­ly every elec­tron­ic de­vice imag­in­able, has made it an at­trac­tive tar­get for met­al loot­ers in South Africa,” a For­tune mag­a­zine ar­ti­cle en­ti­tled ‘Cop­per thieves in South African mines threat­en plat­inum sup­ply for elec­tric cars’ stat­ed.

South African elec­tri­cal com­pa­ny Es­kom Hold­ings told Reuters in Au­gust that cop­per theft was cost­ing it more than US$300 mil­lion to $417 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly.

Due to the mag­ni­tude of the is­sue, the South African gov­ern­ment is con­sid­er­ing a six-month ex­port ban to slow down the il­le­gal trade.

Over in Chile, the il­le­gal cop­per econ­o­my al­so presents a ma­jor chal­lenge for the State.

Cop­per theft is cer­tain­ly less vis­i­ble than oth­er crim­i­nal economies in Chile, but it has a mil­lion-dol­lar im­pact on the na­tion­al econ­o­my and the coun­try’s de­vel­op­ment. It di­rect­ly af­fects min­ing com­pa­nies, and has con­se­quences for com­mu­ni­ties, who are left in the dark when pow­er ca­bles are cut or stolen,” an In­Sight Crime ar­ti­cle en­ti­tled ‘From Cop­per Theft to Ran­somware–Chile’s Crim­i­nal Chal­lenges Be­gin to Mount’ stat­ed.

“Dur­ing our re­search, we’ve ob­served or­gan­ised crim­i­nal groups at work in the il­le­gal cop­per econ­o­my, steal­ing every­thing from ca­bles and mi­nor parts to con­cen­trate and cop­per cath­odes. And this cop­per theft is in­ter­na­tion­al in scope: large seizures at na­tion­al ports in­di­cate that the stolen pro­ceeds are ex­port­ed to Asia, pri­mar­i­ly to Chi­na.”

Else­where in South Amer­i­ca, Span­ish-based telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny Tele­fon­i­ca re­port­ed ca­ble theft is­sues in Ar­genti­na, Venezuela, and Brazil this year.

Be­tween Feb­ru­ary 2021 and Feb­ru­ary 2022, Tele­fon­i­ca Ar­genti­na re­port­ed 13,268 ca­ble thefts and more than 1 mil­lion me­ters of stolen cop­per ca­ble. The com­pa­ny es­ti­mat­ed that re­plac­ing and re­pair­ing the ca­ble costs them US$18.4 mil­lion a year in Ar­genti­na alone.

In Brazil, Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union Conex­is re­port­ed that 2.3 mil­lion me­ters of ca­bles were stolen in the first half of 2021 alone and an­oth­er 4.6 mil­lion me­tres were stolen in 2020.

The thefts, Conex­is re­port­ed, caused ser­vice in­ter­rup­tions for 6.7 mil­lion cus­tomers in Brazil.

Irate scrap iron workers engage police officer in conversation during their protest in Claxton Bay on Thursday.

INNIS FRANCIS

Fer­gu­son: Com­mu­ni­ties will suf­fer from the ban

When asked if he was aware of the il­le­gal im­port of cop­per and met­als from Venezuela to Trinidad, Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Scrap Iron Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Al­lan Fer­gu­son said he was not aware of it.

“I am fa­mil­iar with a lot of things with this in­dus­try, but I’m not fa­mil­iar with ma­te­r­i­al com­ing in from Venezuela. It’s against the law to bring ma­te­r­i­al in from Venezuela. There’s no port tak­ing that ma­te­r­i­al. So, I don’t know how they get­ting that ma­te­r­i­al from Venezuela,” he said.

“But I’m not go­ing to say it not hap­pen­ing be­cause if drugs and co­caine com­ing in, why scrap can’t come in? Even the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice says guns and oth­er things are com­ing from Venezuela. So what is scrap, if scrap com­ing in?”

Sun­day Guardian al­so asked him if he was aware that much of the stolen cop­per and met­al in Trinidad and To­ba­go was be­ing ex­port­ed to Chi­na.

He said, “As I say, there are some peo­ple who will break the law to make mon­ey. It’s not this in­dus­try alone that it’s hap­pen­ing. I know some peo­ple will break the law to send things. They say it’s scrap, but it’s cop­per.

“The scan­ners at the port, they are not us­ing it to scan scrap con­tain­ers and that’s why they could get away with that.”

Fer­gu­son, once again, lament­ed that the Gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed the so­lu­tion to the is­sue was a six-month ex­port ban of scrap iron.

He said the im­pact of the ban will be felt in many com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try, as the in­dus­try em­ploys thou­sands of peo­ple.

“It’s on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore they feel it in their pock­ets, you know. We will make at­tempts to calm peo­ple down, but it’s dif­fi­cult to calm peo­ple down when you can’t feed their fam­i­lies…I don’t know if this Gov­ern­ment is will­ing to lis­ten like how the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship was will­ing to lis­ten in 2011,” Fer­gu­son said.

In 2011, the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship pro­posed a ban on ex­port­ing scrap iron.

Ac­cord­ing to Fer­gu­son, the ban was over­turned with­in two weeks of their de­ci­sion.

Last Au­gust, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds said that there were 218 ar­rests by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice in con­nec­tion to the theft of cop­per and oth­er met­als since 2020.

He es­ti­mat­ed that cop­per sells for as much as $15,000 per tonne.

On Thurs­day last, dozens of peo­ple blocked the high­way near Clax­ton Bay in protest of the Gov­ern­ment’s six-month ban on scrap met­al ex­ports.

There were al­so protests in the area on Tues­day.

Scrap Iron Dealers Association President Allan Ferguson.

Theft af­ter theft

In June, thieves broke in­to a Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny fa­cil­i­ty in Moru­ga, steal­ing bat­ter­ies, a dig­i­tal video recorder sys­tem, and cop­per fit­tings.

Loss­es were es­ti­mat­ed to be $115,000.

In Ju­ly, thou­sands of TSTT cus­tomers ex­pe­ri­enced tech­ni­cal is­sues af­ter thieves stole 500 me­ters of cop­per ca­bles in San Fer­nan­do.

Ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter, loss­es were close to $ 1 mil­lion.

In Au­gust, po­lice re­cov­ered steel poles and I-Beams, from a scrap iron yard near the Munroe Road Over­pass, that were stolen from the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port’s Ca­roni of­fice.

Po­lice ar­rest­ed two men.

Al­so in Au­gust, thieves stole elec­tri­cal ca­bles, equip­ment, and met­al sheets from WASA’s Cal­i­for­nia Boost­er Sta­tion in Point Lisas.

In June, Brazen thieves stole a metal­lic church bell from St John and James An­gli­can Church along the East­ern Main Road, Pe­tit Bourg.

Mean­while, since May, Ma­yaro res­i­dents have com­plained about un­re­li­able ser­vice from TSTT as a re­sult of ca­ble theft in the area.