JENSEN LA VENDE

and DA­REECE PO­LO

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Ex­tor­tion in T&T has grown in­to a mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar crim­i­nal en­ter­prise that is wide­ly un­der­re­port­ed. Small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es, neigh­bour­hood par­lours and con­trac­tors in the con­struc­tion in­dus­try, both pri­vate and state, are be­ing tar­get­ed. The con­struc­tion sec­tor has had to fork out mil­lions of dol­lars per day, the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try (JCC) said, forc­ing the cost of con­struc­tion to go up by at least ten per cent in re­cent years.

Ex­tor­tion or “tax”, as the crim­i­nals call it, has been a thorn in busi­ness own­ers’ sides for decades. In most cas­es, the mat­ter is not re­port­ed and busi­ness­men usu­al­ly pay what is de­mand­ed of them. One busi­ness cham­ber claimed there were re­ports that a few peo­ple had closed down their busi­ness­es while oth­ers had mi­grat­ed to es­cape the crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

The sit­u­a­tion has been ex­ac­er­bat­ed over the years as crim­i­nals have be­come more em­bold­ened and their tar­gets fear­ful of re­port­ing the in­ci­dents.

The un­der­re­port­ing of these in­ci­dents makes it dif­fi­cult to get a true fi­nan­cial tal­ly on this crim­i­nal en­ter­prise. How­ev­er, the JCC es­ti­mat­ed it was cost­ing the coun­try mil­lions of dol­lars a day.

Be­tween 2010 and 2018, the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit (FIU) record­ed 43 in­ci­dents of sus­pi­cious trans­ac­tions linked to ex­tor­tion with 15 hav­ing a cash val­ue to­talling $952,444.

The FIU’s 2017 and 2018 re­ports had dol­lar val­ues on sus­pi­cious trans­ac­tions linked to ex­tor­tion—there were nine trans­ac­tions val­ued at $379,000 in 2017 and six in­stances amount­ing to $573,444 in 2018.

From 2019 to 2022 ex­tor­tion was lumped with fraud and forgery by the FIU.

Some busi­ness own­ers have been writ­ing off the ex­tor­tion as do­na­tions, as some crim­i­nals have been us­ing the de­mand for “do­na­tions” as a front to col­lect the mon­ey.

Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands that based on da­ta gath­ered from mem­bers of a busi­ness group, busi­ness­es in St He­le­na and Pi­ar­co are prime tar­gets for crim­i­nals mak­ing a liv­ing off ex­tor­tion.  

Most mem­bers were afraid to re­spond to ques­tions on the mat­ter. How­ev­er, of the 20 will­ing to speak, eight con­firmed be­ing vic­tims. “The com­pa­nies are main­ly medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es with 100 to 150 em­ploy­ees,” a source added.

Some of the in­tel­li­gence gath­ered by gang­sters, the busi­ness group said, came from rogue bank em­ploy­ees or cor­rupt po­lice.  

The Sun­day Guardian reached out to sev­er­al busi­ness own­ers in the Cen­tral area who were con­fid­ing in each oth­er that they were be­ing tar­get­ed, but none want­ed to speak.

In April, for­mer UNC sen­a­tor Tahar­qa Obi­ka raised the is­sue of an in­crease in ex­tor­tion in Ca­roni.

Obi­ka said the par­ty was re­ceiv­ing re­ports of in­creased ex­tor­tion, but busi­ness own­ers were afraid that if they went to the po­lice, rogue el­e­ments with­in the ser­vice would alert the crim­i­nals.

De­mand­ing mon­ey by men­ace on the rise

The is­sue of ex­tor­tion or de­mand­ing mon­ey by men­ace has been in­creas­ing in re­cent months with busi­ness­men be­ing key tar­gets.

Last week, Guardian Me­dia ex­clu­sive­ly re­port­ed a con­trac­tor went to the po­lice in­stead of pay­ing the crim­i­nals to keep the peace.

The con­trac­tor record­ed a con­ver­sa­tion with a gang­ster who threat­ened to cut elec­tric­i­ty to the job site. The de­mand was for a cash pay­ment of $30,000 or for his men to be em­ployed by the con­trac­tor. Po­lice are now in­ves­ti­gat­ing the in­ci­dent.

The lat­est in­ci­dent comes two weeks af­ter work re­sumed at Mal­oney Gar­dens fol­low­ing the killing of con­trac­tor Kevin Bark­er who re­fused to pay $20,000 from a $90,000 con­tract to an ex­tor­tion­ist.

On Au­gust 29, Bark­er was shot dead be­hind Build­ing 8, Mal­oney Gar­dens. Po­lice re­port­ed that three men in dark clothes, all wear­ing masks, two armed with ri­fles and one with a hand­gun, opened fire on Bark­er be­fore run­ning off. Po­lice re­cov­ered 19 spent 5.56 mm shells, 24 spent 9 mm shells and three 5.56 mm rounds of am­mu­ni­tion at the scene.  

Days be­fore, Bark­er was threat­ened and told he had to pay oth­er­wise he would be killed. It was the sec­ond time he had told crim­i­nals no. Months ear­li­er when he was award­ed a con­tract as part of the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion’s (HDC) re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­gramme, Bark­er was told he had to pay gang­sters. Bark­er nev­er re­port­ed the mat­ter to the po­lice.

Af­ter his killing, the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion works stopped and on­ly re­sumed in late Sep­tem­ber.

Last month, a so­cial me­dia clip sur­faced of an al­leged record­ed con­ver­sa­tion with gang­sters and a Cen­tral busi­ness­man. The busi­ness­man was plead­ing with a crim­i­nal who threat­ened him and his fam­i­ly for fail­ing to hand over $100,000.

In the record­ing, which was one minute and 58 sec­onds long, the busi­ness­man be­gins by ask­ing the man what he did to de­serve be­ing ex­tort­ed.

Ex­tor­tion­ist: “Wey yuh de­cide to do? Wey yuh de­cide to do?”

Busi­ness­man: “Lemme ask yuh a ques­tion, wey it is I do al­lyuh? Wey it is I do al­lyuh?”

Ex­tor­tion­ist: “Yuh see what go­ing on in d place?”

Busi­ness­man: “Yeah, but what it is I do al­lyuh? At the end of the day I ketch­ing … I want you to lis­ten to me, lis­ten to me. At the end of the day we here to make a dol­lar with my sick self, right. I don’t have no mon­ey to pay no­body. Right now I ow­ing the bank and I ow­ing the hos­pi­tal. If you come and kill me, you will kill me faster. Right now I cyar able with that. I ow­ing the hos­pi­tal mon­ey.”

Ex­tor­tion­ist: “You on­ly study­ing yuh­self. And yuh want to play in the game … So yuh ain’t val­ue yuh chil­dren life and thing?”

Busi­ness­man: How yuh mean I ain’t val­ue … Where yuh want me to get mon­ey to pay yuh?”

Ex­tor­tion­ist: “All them busi­ness­es yuh daugh­ter every­body run­ning dey, yuh feel we doh know what go­ing on? Stop play­ing games with we eh?”

Busi­ness­man: “But dais the bank own. I had­da pay the bank.”

At this point the ex­tor­tion­ist in­tim­i­dates the man and is scep­ti­cal of the busi­ness­man’s claim that the bank owns his busi­ness.

The ex­tor­tion­ist sud­den­ly de­vel­ops a stut­ter and asks: “So dai dai dai, dais yuh fi­nal de­ci­sion?”

Busi­ness­man: “Well what yuh want meh to do?”

The ex­tor­tion­ist replies say­ing he wants him to pay the boss­es, to which the busi­ness­man asks, who is the boss?

Ex­tor­tion­ist: “Here wah go­ing on nah, like you doh val­ue yuh chil­dren life?”

The call then ends.

In the an­nu­al re­ports filed by the Ju­di­cia­ry from 2000 to 2021, there is no men­tion of any cas­es of ex­tor­tion or de­mand­ing mon­ey by men­ace.

On the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) web­site, there is no cat­e­go­ry for ex­tor­tion or de­mand­ing mon­ey by men­ace.

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher could not be reached for com­ment.

Gary: I used sting op­er­a­tions to curb this un­der my watch

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith told the Sun­day Guardian there were very few re­ports of ex­tor­tion un­der his watch from 2018 to 2021.

He re­called one in­ci­dent where po­lice of­fi­cers were placed un­der­cov­er to cap­ture gang­sters who sought to stop the erec­tion of the bleach­ers at South Quay in prepa­ra­tion for Car­ni­val one year.

Grif­fith said in an­oth­er in­ci­dent the State sought po­lice as­sis­tance through ex­tra-du­ty arrange­ments to safe­guard a job site, but the mon­ey to pay po­lice of­fi­cers was high­er than the de­mand made by the crim­i­nals.

Dur­ing the con­struc­tion of the Bon Air Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre when po­lice of­fi­cers were hired, the low­est-ranked of­fi­cer was paid $56 an hour. The project be­gan in Sep­tem­ber 2017 and was sched­uled to be com­plet­ed in Au­gust of the fol­low­ing year. It was com­mis­sioned in Jan­u­ary 2020.

“We need to be proac­tive about these types of things and not say this is a con­cern to the po­lice. I had sting op­er­a­tions where I placed po­lice of­fi­cers in the uni­form of the work­ers and when they came to col­lect, we would record them au­dio and vi­su­al and then take their ghost. That is what you need,” he said.

Grif­fith said the crim­i­nal would stop state con­tracts by threat­en­ing work­ers and or de­mand­ing that they or their as­so­ciates be giv­en em­ploy­ment. In some cas­es, he said, crim­i­nals were pre­ferred con­trac­tors to avoid con­trac­tors from out­side of a com­mu­ni­ty from be­ing tar­get­ed.

Char­ran: De­vote a unit for this

Pres­i­dent of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers Vivek Char­ran con­grat­u­lat­ed busi­ness­men who stepped for­ward say­ing that was the on­ly way to ad­dress the is­sue.

Char­ran said the is­sue of ex­tor­tion has been a grow­ing con­cern among the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and the mat­ter should be treat­ed se­ri­ous­ly.

“Maybe the po­lice should de­vote a par­tic­u­lar spe­cial unit, a cen­tralised unit for this. It is im­por­tant for us to say that we are hap­py to see that the po­lice have been able to deal with that par­tic­u­lar prob­lem.”

Char­ran added, “What’s hap­pen­ing as well is that when busi­ness­men can’t pay, they (busi­ness­men) call fam­i­ly mem­bers and bor­row from this one and that one. It is be­com­ing a mess. I be­lieve it is an easy thing to crack down on, it is an easy thing to solve but the crim­i­nals and they have found an easy way to get mon­ey.”

Ex­tor­tion cas­es

* Last month Ju­nior Prince, 52, and Ke­ston Look­nanan, 36, both from Kel­ly Vil­lage, Ca­roni, were charged with ex­tort­ing  $100,000 from a busi­ness­man. Af­ter pay­ing the de­mands, the busi­ness­man was ap­proached for more un­til he re­port­ed the mat­ter to the po­lice.

* In Au­gust, 24-year-old Diego Mar­tin res­i­dent Loren­zo Julien was sen­tenced to four years in prison af­ter plead­ing guilty to de­mand­ing mon­ey by men­ace af­ter threat­en­ing to hurt a man and his fam­i­ly if it was un­paid. Julien’s co-ac­cused Joel Patrick, 24, al­so from Diego Mar­tin, and Ka­viann Alex­is, 26, of D’Abadie, plead­ed not guilty. Patrick was grant­ed $300,000 bail while Alex­is was de­nied bail and re­mand­ed in­to cus­tody.

* In April, sev­en po­lice of­fi­cers were charged with mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice and per­vert­ing the course of jus­tice in a TTPS Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dard Bu­reau probe in­to com­plaints by San­gre Grande busi­ness­men that they were be­ing ex­tort­ed by a group of of­fi­cers.

* In 2020, dur­ing the open­ing of the $19-mil­lion-dol­lar Bon Air Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, of­fi­cials at the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Ude­cott) said six peo­ple were mur­dered af­ter gang­sters fought for the con­tract when one com­pa­ny sur­ren­dered it be­cause of ex­tor­tion.

Two con­trac­tors were hired for the one job af­ter the one re­ject­ed it be­cause of con­stant threats by crim­i­nals. The first con­tract award­ed was worth $10.4 mil­lion and was award­ed to Zion Con­struc­tion Ltd. The con­tract was aban­doned af­ter sev­er­al threats were made by crim­i­nals de­mand­ing em­ploy­ment or mon­ey to al­low the work to con­tin­ue.

The sec­ond con­trac­tor, Sphinx Ltd, was hired to com­plete the project. Dur­ing this pe­ri­od gun­men opened fire at work­ers on the com­pound and po­lice were then paid to be on site.