Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly is now claim­ing he is be­ing threat­ened by crim­i­nals who are ex­tort­ing busi­ness­es in Cen­tral Trinidad be­cause he is high­light­ing those is­sues.

Ram­bal­ly yes­ter­day con­firmed re­ceiv­ing threats, re­layed through third-par­ty sources, warn­ing him to aban­don his con­ver­sa­tions about how ex­tor­tion has been af­fect­ing the cen­tral busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, how­ev­er, Ram­bal­ly said he had not made any po­lice re­port yet but said he was not fazed.

“The sit­u­a­tion has be­come so dire. Why can’t we seek in­ter­na­tion­al as­sis­tance? We’ve done it in the past, so why can’t we do it again for some of these spe­cif­ic crimes?

“We’ve part­nered with the US be­fore for train­ing and had FBI agents come here, as well as Scot­land Yard in cer­tain in­stances, to guide us on how to in­ves­ti­gate cer­tain crimes and what steps to take. Why can’t we have sim­i­lar part­ner­ships again? Just as we re­cent­ly en­gaged the US Drug En­force­ment Agency, we should con­sid­er such col­lab­o­ra­tions across the board.”

He added, “The an­swers are not with­in our grasp alone. The Gov­ern­ment is not do­ing enough, and we’ve reached a break­ing point. It feels as though we’ve gone too far and can­not res­cue our­selves from this es­ca­lat­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

“The busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, based on my in­ter­ac­tions and on­go­ing con­ver­sa­tions with them, lacks con­fi­dence in re­port­ing is­sues to the po­lice ser­vice. They fear ret­ri­bu­tion from crim­i­nal el­e­ments and wor­ry that their in­for­ma­tion could be eas­i­ly leaked, even if the po­lice of­fi­cers them­selves are not di­rect­ly in­volved.”

The Cunu­pia Busi­ness Cham­ber re­cent­ly held a meet­ing on the is­sue but vice pres­i­dent Ryan De Cas­tro said yes­ter­day that an of­fi­cial state­ment will be re­leased soon.

Guardian Me­dia ob­tained a voice note from a Cunu­pia busi­ness­man who claimed ex­tor­tion was not just be­ing done by crim­i­nals but pub­lic of­fi­cials.

“This ex­tor­tion thing is ab­solute­ly hor­ri­ble and I don’t think that 80 per cent of the coun­try re­al­ly un­der­stand how bad it is,” he said.

He said claimed he could iden­ti­fy over 12 busi­ness­es con­front­ed by ex­tor­tion­ists. He said some busi­ness own­ers were tak­ing down signs to hide their ac­tiv­i­ty from the crim­i­nals, al­though they had le­git­i­mate busi­ness­es.

“Even our­selves in Chin Chin Road, we are tak­ing down our signs and tak­ing signs off our doors and do­ing a cou­ple things dif­fer­ent now but even my busi­ness part­ner, she doesn’t live here any­more, and it took us 18 to 20 years to build this busi­ness and now we con­sid­er­ing leav­ing it, but this thing is go­ing on and on, we are now freak­ing out Cunu­pia peo­ple,” he claimed.

He al­so ques­tioned whether the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s An­ti-Ex­tor­tion Unit had the man­pow­er to tack­le the prob­lem. He al­so al­leged even pub­lic of­fi­cials are en­gag­ing them with claims their busi­ness­es are non-com­pli­ant with gov­ern­ment poli­cies, and ask­ing for pay­ments to make those is­sues go away.

Mean­while, TTPS An­ti-Ex­tor­tion Task Force head, ACP Richard Smith, said they were now hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty as­sess­ing the sit­u­a­tion be­cause of the lack of of­fi­cial re­port­ing to them.

“We are be­ing blind­sided be­cause many peo­ple are claim­ing that they’re be­ing ex­tort­ed. We have been open­ing our­selves up, at­tend­ing var­i­ous meet­ings, and shar­ing in­for­ma­tion. We even put out a no­tice on so­cial me­dia af­ter vis­it­ing the (Ch­agua­nas) cham­ber.

“About a month ago, I went there with Min­is­ter (Kei­th) Scot­land, and the cham­ber mem­bers men­tioned they didn’t know the ex­tor­tion unit ex­ist­ed. They sug­gest­ed we pub­li­cise it on so­cial me­dia, which we did. It’s now avail­able on LinkedIn, What­sApp, and oth­er plat­forms to raise aware­ness.”

He added, “We want peo­ple to know they can com­mu­ni­cate with us, vis­it their near­est po­lice sta­tion to make a re­port, or call the hot­lines we’ve made avail­able, and the tools are there for the pub­lic to use.”

Smith said he will soon share sta­tis­tics re­gard­ing the amount of mon­ey paid to ex­tor­tion­ists since his unit was formed.

South-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion head ACP Wayne Mys­tar al­so yes­ter­day again called on busi­ness own­ers to re­port in­ci­dents of ex­tor­tion.

“ACP Richard Smith and that par­tic­u­lar team, once we have that re­port that’s be­ing made, they are go­ing to launch in­ves­ti­ga­tions, and we’re go­ing to deal with it. But the idea is for them to come for­ward. We need them to come for­ward and re­port these cas­es,” Mys­tar said dur­ing a com­mu­ni­ty com­fort pa­trol in En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas, and en­vi­rons.

—With re­port­ing

by Ot­to Car­ring­ton