Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce (GS­FCC) pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh says claims by crim­i­nol­o­gist Dau­rius Figueira that some busi­ness own­ers are in ca­hoots with drug deal­ers and claim­ing they are be­ing ex­tort­ed is crazy.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Singh said, “This is news to me; this is quite sur­pris­ing. I have nev­er heard this be­fore. We have a net­work with the Ch­agua­nas Busi­ness of Com­merce and I have not heard that echo­ing from them. I find it is quite alarm­ing; I mean it is crazy.”

In a so­cial me­dia post over the week­end, Figueira said: “If you take drug man mon­ey to build your em­pire, and the drug man op­er­a­tion col­laps­es, ent peo­ple come look­ing for the mon­ey? Peo­ple come look­ing for the man mon­ey that you are ow­ing. How come that is ex­tor­tion? They are run­ning around now bawl­ing ex­tor­tion to make them­selves vic­tims, but they owe the peo­ple mon­ey, and they are not pay­ing.”

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC) pres­i­dent Bal­dath Ma­haraj de­nied Figue­ria’s claims, de­scrib­ing the com­ments as un­for­tu­nate.

Ma­haraj said: “While I un­der­stand the im­por­tance of ex­am­in­ing all fac­tors con­tribut­ing to crime, I must em­pha­sise that the vast ma­jor­i­ty of busi­ness­peo­ple in our com­mu­ni­ty are hon­est, hard­work­ing in­di­vid­u­als striv­ing to grow their busi­ness­es, sup­port their fam­i­lies, and con­tribute to our econ­o­my by cre­at­ing much-need­ed jobs. It is both in­ac­cu­rate and un­fair to paint all busi­ness­men as com­plic­it in their vic­tim­i­sa­tion.”

In re­sponse to Figue­ria’s so­cial me­dia post, head of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s Ex­tor­tion Unit, Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Richard Smith, said he had no in­for­ma­tion to sup­port the claims. He added that while he does not know “every­one’s busi­ness,” he could not say if the in­for­ma­tion the crim­i­nol­o­gist gave is cor­rect or in­cor­rect, adding that Figue­ria would have his sources.

Yes­ter­day, Singh said while he could not com­plete­ly vouch for oth­er ar­eas, he was sure a “dev­il­ish arrange­ment” was not hap­pen­ing with­in his cham­ber. He said his cham­ber will soon meet with Min­is­ter in the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Kei­th Scot­land to ad­dress crime in the south, in­clud­ing ex­tor­tion, as they pre­pare for the Christ­mas in­to Car­ni­val peak sea­son.

He called for more po­lice pa­trols, both foot and mo­bile, in the San Fer­nan­do area.

Mean­while, for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er and Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance leader Gary Grif­fith called on Figue­ria to pro­vide the sta­tis­tics to back up his claim.

In a me­dia state­ment, Grif­fith said the claims made by Figue­ria could have se­ri­ous reper­cus­sions, as it may “in­ad­ver­tent­ly im­plant in the pub­lic’s mind that every vic­tim of ex­tor­tion and kid­nap­ping is some­how re­spon­si­ble for their sit­u­a­tion due to al­leged in­volve­ment with crim­i­nals.”

He said the rip­ple ef­fect could be the pub­lic’s di­min­ished em­pa­thy for vic­tims, lead­ing to a pos­si­ble “open sea­son” on busi­ness peo­ple and their fam­i­lies across the coun­try.

“This could al­so lead fu­ture vic­tims to shy away from mak­ing re­ports, as rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age may cause them more long-term harm, fur­ther un­der­min­ing the process and giv­ing crim­i­nals an up­per hand, as the TTPS can­not as­sist in an in­ves­ti­ga­tion that has not been re­port­ed.”