The ex­ca­va­tor's claws slash through the earth, rip­ping at lay­ers of soil and sand un­til it hits white grav­el. Like a gi­ant steel in­sect, the ex­ca­va­tor scoops up the min­er­al, then swings its buck­et around to fill a line of 20-tonne dump trucks.

The ma­te­r­i­al from this quar­ry in Orosco Road, Matu­ra will be sold for mil­lions of dol­lars to con­trac­tors, hard­ware stores and home­own­ers who will use it in con­struc­tion projects across the coun­try.

Even though this un­named quar­ry—which en­croach­es on a sen­si­tive tur­tle-nest­ing beach—is part­ly on state land, the Gov­ern­ment will not re­ceive a pen­ny. That's be­cause the Orosco Road op­er­a­tion is an il­le­gal quar­ry.

It's not the on­ly one. The over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty of the sand and grav­el quar­ries in the coun­try are op­er­at­ing il­le­gal­ly or with­out li­cences.

A two-month Guardian Me­dia in­ves­ti­ga­tion has dis­cov­ered that:

•Il­le­gal quar­ries are rob­bing the na­tion's trea­sury of hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars each year. In­stead, the mon­ey is be­ing pock­et­ed by pri­vate busi­ness­men and crim­i­nal net­works.

•The Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, which is re­spon­si­ble for reg­u­lat­ing quar­ries, and the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands, the en­force­ment agency, have vir­tu­al­ly aban­doned their man­dates, al­low­ing the quar­ry sec­tor to turn in­to a free for all.

•As of March 31, 2018, li­cenced quar­ries owed the trea­sury out­stand­ing roy­al­ties of $196,432,478. Roy­al­ties are based on an ho­n­our sys­tem in which op­er­a­tors self-de­clare how much ag­gre­gate they pro­duce, a prac­tice that en­cour­ages un­der-re­port­ing.

•Ex­tra­or­di­nar­i­ly high prof­its com­bined with a low risk of pros­e­cu­tion have at­tract­ed or­gan­ised crime to the quar­ry­ing busi­ness.

•Cor­rupt law en­force­ment of­fi­cials run pro­tec­tion rack­ets for il­le­gal quar­ry own­ers. By many ac­counts, the li­on's share of the prof­its from il­le­gal quar­ries is paid in bribes to po­lice and em­ploy­ees of gov­ern­ment agen­cies re­spon­si­ble for pro­tect­ing state lands.

•The state-owned Na­tion­al Quar­ries Lim­it­ed is not among the eight li­cenced quar­ries in Trinidad and To­ba­go, which means that it is os­ten­si­bly op­er­at­ing an il­le­gal op­er­a­tion.

•Il­le­gal quar­ries de­stroy sen­si­tive forests, kill wildlife, threat­en en­dan­gered species, pol­lute wa­ter­cours­es and af­fect the health and well-be­ing of near­by com­mu­ni­ties. Mud and slush run off from the quar­ries in­to rivers en­sures that no light can pen­e­trate, killing most aquat­ic plants, and even­tu­al­ly every­thing that de­pends on them. WASA pumps and fil­ters are af­fect­ed by the same silt, re­sult­ing in equip­ment fail­ure and wa­ter short­ages. Many quar­ry­ing op­er­a­tions re­sult in dev­as­tat­ing flood­ing.

Se­nior gov­ern­ment min­is­ters would not ac­cept re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for rein­ing in il­le­gal quar­ries. Re­peat­ed calls over the last two months to gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials re­sult­ed in fin­ger point­ing and no clear an­swers why they were al­low­ing il­le­gal quar­ries to op­er­ate with im­puni­ty.

Asked why his Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries was tol­er­at­ing il­le­gal quar­ries in plain sight, Min­is­ter Franklin Khan said: "We are cur­rent­ly work­ing close­ly with the po­lice to stop this il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty."

Khan did not an­swer why il­le­gal quar­ry­ing was oc­cur­ring in close prox­im­i­ty to the Matu­ra Po­lice Sta­tion.

Asked why on­ly eight of the 131 quar­ries were li­cenced, Khan said: "We are work­ing to re­new li­cences. It's a cum­ber­some process. But we are mak­ing progress."

Asked why un­li­cenced quar­ry op­er­a­tors were not pay­ing roy­al­ties, Khan said, "They have to pay the back roy­al­ties to get the re­new­al."

Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat has of­ten vis­it­ed the Matu­ra area for pho­to-ops in­volv­ing tur­tle con­ser­va­tion events. Asked why il­le­gal quar­ry­ing was be­ing al­lowed, he said via Face­book Mes­sen­ger: "I have made sev­er­al re­ports to the Min­istry of En­er­gy. Re­ports on what's hap­pen­ing [with il­le­gal quar­ries] in Matu­ra and in Waller­field…we are the Gov­ern­ment but not the po­lice.

"I can on­ly work as fast as the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the TTPS works," he said. "The last two raids were my work be­cause I got of­fi­cers I know to co­op­er­ate. So, I have to keep giv­ing them in­fo and wait­ing un­til they act. Last night I arranged to meet Min­er­als Di­vi­sion of Min­istry of En­er­gy to find out why they are not act­ing."

Asked why his Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty tol­er­at­ed the ex­is­tence of il­le­gal quar­ries, Min­is­ter Stu­art Young re­spond­ed: "First­ly, the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries is re­spon­si­ble for quar­ry­ing. Sec­ond­ly, the en­force­ment agency for pro­tec­tion of State lands is the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands. Ac­cord­ing­ly, the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty is not re­spon­si­ble."

Young said the po­lice ser­vice has "a lev­el of au­ton­o­my and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice has the com­plete pow­er to man­age the po­lice ser­vice."

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith did not re­spond to sev­er­al re­quests for com­ment.

As di­rec­tor of min­er­als at the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, Mon­ty Be­har­ry is re­spon­si­ble for the li­cenc­ing and en­force­ment of the quar­ry in­dus­try. He earns $229,464 per year while pre­sid­ing over a fail­ing Min­er­als Di­vi­sion. On­ly eight out of 131 quar­ries known to the Min­istry are li­cenced.

De­spite as­sur­ances that they would re­spond to Guardian Me­dia's re­quests for in­for­ma­tion, Be­har­ry and Choy Fe­lix, se­nior com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer of the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, de­clined to do so.

Ma­chines Ver­sus Vul­ner­a­ble Mon­keys

On a re­cent vis­it to the il­le­gal Orosco Road quar­ry, a male red howler mon­key swings through the for­est. Red howlers, among the coun­try's vul­ner­a­ble species, are the loud­est an­i­mals on land. Their dra­mat­ic vo­cal­i­sa­tions can be heard three miles away, but on a re­cent day the red howler's growl com­pet­ed with the roar of chain­saws felling mo­ra trees so that ex­ca­va­tors can get to work on rip­ping up the for­est be­low. The howlers proved no match for the sounds of diesel en­gines, the grat­ing sound of met­al on stone, and met­al on met­al.

The for­est, which abuts Matu­ra Beach, har­bours man­groves and some of the last stands of cen­turies-old mo­ra trees on the is­land. The moras are tow­er­ing ever­green trees which can grow up to 45 me­tres high with a girth of 12 me­tres. Be­cause the wood is hard, heavy and tough, mo­ra trees are prized by builders who use them for sup­port­ing beams and durable floors in hous­es.

In­side The Il­le­gal Quar­ry

Guardian Me­dia spent sev­er­al weeks mon­i­tor­ing the il­le­gal quar­ry on Orosco Road.

The forest­ed ar­eas of Matu­ra and Va­len­cia are high­ly sought af­ter by quar­ry op­er­a­tors be­cause they are among the few places in Trinidad where the so-called Cu­napo con­glom­er­ates, or grav­el beds, are near the sur­face. In oth­er parts of the is­land, these min­er­al de­posits, formed by ero­sion of the North­ern and Cen­tral Ranges, are too deep to be dug eco­nom­i­cal­ly, said Xavier Moo­nan, a se­nior geo­sci­en­tist with Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration.

Drone footage com­mis­sioned by Guardian Me­dia shows that the il­le­gal Orosco Road quar­ry in­trudes on the 500-me­tre re­serve zone which pro­tects Matu­ra's tur­tle-nest­ing beach, a site of glob­al im­por­tance for leatherback sea tur­tle con­ser­va­tion. Google Earth pic­tures show that the site was not quar­ried pri­or to March, 2016.

On a re­cent day, the quar­ry was a hotbed of ac­tiv­i­ty. The ex­ca­va­tor's op­er­a­tor digs fu­ri­ous­ly and loads the line of trucks com­ing and go­ing. Grav­el worth tens of thou­sands of dol­lars is ex­tract­ed from un­der the for­est floor dai­ly.

A 20-tonne truck­load of the Cu­napo grav­el sells for about $2,500. At least 30 trucks haul away grav­el from the site each day, which means the il­le­gal quar­ry op­er­a­tor could pock­et about $13 mil­lion a year. No roy­al­ties or VAT are paid, nor is dam­age to the ecosys­tem as­sessed or re­paired.

Work­ers at the quar­ry re­fused to say who ran the op­er­a­tion. Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed fol­lowed trucks from the quar­ry site, where they were loaded with ag­gre­gate, to a wash plant off the Va­len­cia Main Road where the ag­gre­gate is processed for sale.

The Matu­ra Po­lice Sta­tion sits near the junc­tion of the To­co Main Road and Orosco Road. It's the on­ly way in and out for trucks laden with grav­el from the il­le­gal quar­ry. These large trucks must rat­tle the fur­ni­ture in­side the sta­tion when they pass. There's al­so a large wash plant for quar­ry stone near the junc­tion. Re­search at the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) re­vealed that there is no cer­tifi­cate of en­vi­ron­men­tal clear­ance for this wash plant.

Il­le­gal quar­ry­ing is so lu­cra­tive that op­er­a­tors can af­ford to dri­ve un­washed ag­gre­gate long dis­tances to li­cenced quar­ries or wash plants, where the ag­gre­gate can be processed and sold "legal­ly," ac­cord­ing to one promi­nent quar­ry op­er­a­tor, who asked that his name be with­held. (He said that af­ter a po­lice­man tried to ex­tort mon­ey from him for "pro­tec­tion," he no longer vis­its his quar­ry busi­ness as he now fears for his life.)

A Con­fronta­tion With Il­le­gal Op­er­a­tors

Af­ter sev­er­al days ob­serv­ing the Orosco Road quar­ry with a drone and cam­era, a Guardian Me­dia re­porter and pho­tog­ra­ph­er de­cid­ed to ask peo­ple why they were en­gaged in an il­le­gal op­er­a­tion. The jour­nal­ists ob­served a truck be­ing loaded with grav­el at the far end of the quar­ry, which is with­in the re­serve bound­ary of the pro­tect­ed tur­tle-nest­ing beach.

When three truck dri­vers on the site spot­ted the jour­nal­ists wield­ing video cam­eras, they hur­ried­ly start­ed their en­gines and drove off. Un­der the Min­er­als Act, peo­ple en­gaged in il­le­gal quar­ry­ing can be fined up to $500,000 and face im­pris­on­ment of up to five years.

Af­ter spot­ting the jour­nal­ists, the ex­ca­va­tor op­er­a­tor swung his equip­ment around in what seemed like an ag­gres­sive ma­noeu­vre. Lat­er, it be­came clear that he tried to keep the rear end of the ex­ca­va­tor cock­pit to the cam­era, so he couldn't be filmed.

Up­on leav­ing the il­le­gal quar­ry, the jour­nal­ists ob­served a new line of truck dri­vers who wait­ed for the con­fronta­tion to end so that they could get their loads of the il­le­gal min­er­al.

Lit­tle Or No En­force­ment

The Min­er­als Act gives Be­har­ry, the di­rec­tor of min­er­als, the pow­er to ter­mi­nate il­le­gal min­ing on both state and pri­vate lands. By many ac­counts, Be­har­ry sel­dom us­es these pow­ers.

Among the un­li­cenced quar­ry op­er­a­tors is Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh, own­er of Ag­gre­gate In­dus­tries Lim­it­ed, who is want­ed for ex­tra­di­tion to the Unit­ed States on cor­rup­tion charges. The li­cence for his 238-acre quar­ry on pri­vate land in Matu­ra lapsed in 2014 but the quar­ry re­mains in full op­er­a­tion. Gal­barans­ingh said the process for re­new­al of his li­cence was com­pli­cat­ed.

Crim­i­nal Net­works Ver­sus Reg­u­la­tors

En­force­ment of­fi­cers at the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty, Forestry Di­vi­sion and the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs told Guardian Me­dia that their lives have been threat­ened for en­ter­ing il­le­gal quar­ries to do their work. The threats have pre­vent­ed them from tak­ing fur­ther ac­tion, said the of­fi­cers, who asked that their names be with­held.

In a sep­a­rate case, Guardian Me­dia learned that a po­lice sergeant had to re­quest a trans­fer to an­oth­er po­lice dis­trict af­ter his at­tempts to stop il­le­gal quar­ry­ing in Matu­ra re­sult­ed in threats from his own sub­or­di­nates.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view, for­mer min­is­ter of en­er­gy and en­er­gy af­fairs, Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan in­sist­ed that il­le­gal quar­ries were "a po­lice mat­ter." Dur­ing a vis­it to the Matu­ra Po­lice Sta­tion, a po­lice of­fi­cer who on­ly iden­ti­fied him­self as act­ing Cor­po­ral Williams said that the po­lice must get or­ders from the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries to act against il­le­gal quar­ries. He said po­lice can­not act on their own as "these days every­body likes to sue."

Asked about the dozens of trucks that haul grav­el from il­le­gal quar­ries, then rum­ble by his po­lice sta­tion al­most every day, the act­ing cor­po­ral laughed and said that he had no knowl­edge of il­le­gal quar­ries in the area and had no re­ports about such ac­tiv­i­ties.

Lo­cals in Matu­ra re­count­ed how crim­i­nal el­e­ments had tak­en over a sub­stan­tial part of the quar­ry­ing busi­ness. Jagdeo Jankie, who said he once op­er­at­ed a le­gal quar­ry in Matu­ra, said an il­le­gal quar­ry op­er­a­tor, Mark Mo­hammed, had set up an un­li­cenced quar­ry next to his plot.

Jankie said in 2012 Mo­hammed had a bound­ary dis­pute with him and tried to set­tle it by set­ting fire to his bull­doz­er and ex­ca­va­tor, val­ued at over $2 mil­lion. Jankie said he aban­doned his own quar­ry ac­tiv­i­ties af­ter the in­ci­dent.

In 2012, en­vi­ron­men­tal groups lob­bied reg­u­la­tors to shut down Mo­hammed's il­le­gal quar­ry in a mo­ra for­est near "Ice Cream Cor­ner" in an area called Rio Grande. Mo­hammed lat­er lost con­trol of his il­le­gal quar­ry to a more pow­er­ful op­er­a­tor linked to a host of il­le­gal quar­ries.

In April 2015, Mo­hammed, then 26, was shot dead in his white Mer­cedes Benz. Me­dia re­ports de­scribed him as "a Cen­tral busi­ness­man" and "a car deal­er." A Guardian sto­ry said, "the killing…may have been as a re­sult of a land dis­pute."

A re­cent vis­it to the site of Mo­hammed's quar­ry showed that the site is now aban­doned and over­grown with weeds. On the side of a ram­shackle build­ing, paint­ed in red let­ters are the words: "RIP Mark from Gums."

I'll Sue You For Raid­ing My Quar­ry

In one of the rare raids of a quar­ry, the Gov­ern­ment was left with a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar bill. That case in­volved Dan­ny Guer­ra, re­put­ed to be one of the top quar­ry op­er­a­tors in the area. In ad­di­tion, Guer­ra op­er­ates a re­al es­tate busi­ness, D Guer­ra & Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, which sells mil­lion-dol­lar homes in a gat­ed com­mu­ni­ty in San­gre Grande.

In Jan­u­ary 2013, po­lice and oth­er au­thor­i­ties en­tered Guer­ra's quar­ry near St An­drews Trace in Matu­ra, seiz­ing 12 dump trucks, a con­crete mix­er, a trac­tor and an ATV.

Guer­ra had pre­vi­ous­ly been ar­rest­ed for il­le­gal quar­ry­ing ac­tiv­i­ties, ac­cord­ing to court doc­u­ments. The equip­ment was found in an il­le­gal quar­ry, but the State's case col­lapsed af­ter po­lice failed to press charges against Mr Guer­ra, or to in­form him of any pros­e­cu­tion in­volv­ing his equip­ment.

Guer­ra sued af­ter hir­ing some of the coun­try's top lawyers, in­clud­ing Wayne Sturge, Lemuel Mur­phy and for­mer UNC sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen.

In 2015, High Court Judge Ricky Rahim or­dered the State to pay Guer­ra $4.2 mil­lion.

Through his lawyers, Guer­ra de­clined an in­ter­view. Sturge re­spond­ed that "I will ad­vise against it for ob­vi­ous rea­sons."

Ramdeen said via text mes­sage that Guer­ra has "on­go­ing mat­ters be­fore the court" and "it would not be ap­pro­pri­ate for [him] to make state­ments in an in­ter­view that may find their way in­to a re­port that may be prej­u­di­cial to his case."

Why You Should Care About Il­le­gal Quar­ries

Il­le­gal quar­ries:

• De­stroy sen­si­tive forests

• Kill wildlife

• Threat­en en­dan­gered species

• Pol­lute wa­ter­cours­es

• Af­fect the health and well-be­ing of peo­ple

Se­nior gov­ern­ment min­is­ters pass the buck

Guardian Me­dia asked gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, po­lice and oth­er en­force­ment agen­cies why il­le­gal quar­ries were be­ing al­lowed to op­er­ate in plain sight with im­puni­ty:

Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat:

"I can on­ly work as fast as the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the TTPS works. I arranged to meet Min­er­als Di­vi­sion of Min­istry of En­er­gy to find out why they are not act­ing."

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young:

"The Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries is re­spon­si­ble for quar­ry­ing. Sec­ond­ly, the en­force­ment agency for pro­tec­tion of state lands is the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands. Ac­cord­ing­ly, the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty is not re­spon­si­ble."

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan:

"We are cur­rent­ly work­ing close­ly with the po­lice to stop with this il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty."

Di­rec­tor of Min­er­als, Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, Mon­ty Be­har­ry: No an­swer

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith: No An­swer